


Luminous

by terebi_me



Category: Blur
Genre: Awkward Romance, Best Friends, Emo Teens, First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Multi, Period-Typical Homophobia, RPF, Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll, no one understands bisexuality exists, pre-fame, the 80s were a different time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-08-28 02:44:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8428375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terebi_me/pseuds/terebi_me
Summary: Graham finally acts on his unspoken feelings for Damon, and the results threaten to destroy the band, destroy Graham's sanity once and for all, give Alex liver failure, or put Dave behind bars... Ah, the Seymour days when life was wild and carefree, besides all the angst and drug abuse.





	1. (1)

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in winter of 2001/2002. This will be the first of many various bandfics I have written over many years that I will be adding to Ao3. Sharing is caring. NOW COMPLETE - YAY

  
_Half your life has been explained_  
_You want the other half_

 

Graham, in a corner of the club, chews on the paper rim of his beer cup and glares across the room at Damon. He's convinced Damon is trying to drive him mad.

He's been at it all night in fact. Drinking absinthe and rosewater, a new affectation of his that makes him smell like a ... well, a florist's shop invaded by 19 th century French drunkards. Reeling about, putting his arms round every girl and most of the boys, trading kisses that get stickier and sloppier each time. Making lewd comments about everyone. At first Graham tried to be amused, laugh it off, but now he's had enough and he doesn't find it funny anymore. After some listless dancing and many cups of indifferent beer, Graham retreated to his safe corner to keep a better eye on Damon and not be distracted by conversation.

By one o'clock Graham has worked himself into a drunken, frustrated frenzy. He marches across the club and collars Damon mid-dance, all but wrestling him off his feet. "We need to talk right now," Graham hisses in his ear, dragging him away. Damon looks around himself in a vague sense of surprise, but he's had too many drinks to react quickly. By the time he's able to voice a protest, he's already been shoved into the coat closet of the club, where Graham sometimes keeps his gear till morning after a show. Graham follows him into the semi-dark little square room, still rustling with damp coats, and then locks the door.

"What's the problem, Graham?" Damon slurs, all rumpled, offended boyish innocence.

"You're doing it on purpose," Graham spits out, grabbing the front of Damon's shirt and shoving him back against the coats until his cushioned back hits the wall. Graham presses himself against Damon, still clutching his T-shirt in his sweaty fists, and blowing hot, hoppy breath against Damon's face.

"Doing what?" Damon whispers, still clueless.

"All those kisses. For everybody else. When for God's sake you know how much _I_ want you."

Damon lets a nervous, disbelieving giggle escape. "What?"

Graham feels a horrid, regretful panic, and he leans in to steal his kiss before he loses his nerve. He almost panics, wondering how his mate is going to react, whether things will be strange from now on... not that they aren't strange already. They have been strange since the first moment they met, and Graham struggled with a mixture of annoyance and admiration for the spiky-headed moppet with the big eyes and the big mouth to match it, the one who everyone respected, but nobody really talked to. He has tried his best to be what Damon wants, especially when Damon wants him to be something other than what Damon wants him to be. Even Graham's rebellions are at Damon's whims. And Graham has had enough. He wants to do what he wants to do, and Damon be damned. But what he wants to do is...

His lips hit Damon's cheek, and correct themselves onto Damon's mouth. Graham loses his nerve then, and keeps his mouth closed, only managing a dry peck before he draws away. He lets go of Damon's shirt and lets his arms drop to his sides, but he can't bring himself to move his body away from Damon's, leaning against him. _I'm drunk,_ he thinks. _I'm not in my right mind. I'll explain in the morning. We've snogged before and then apologised later. But until he says something... he feels so good against me. I could get addicted to that strong heartbeat, threatening to drown out my own…_

"You know how much I want you," Graham grumbles involuntarily, feeling his face go hot. He's glad of the darkness so Damon won't see him blushing and gnawing on his lip, chewing off Damon's kiss. Ingesting it. Keeping it with him.

Graham also cannot see the smirk that accompanies Damon's short laugh. "No, I don't," Damon says. "I guess I do now, eh?"

Graham feels like his face is going to explode if any more blood tries to rush into it. He wonders if this full-body contact is worth the terrible humiliation that he feels, and he tries to find his own balance again, so that he can move away, and apologies hover on his lips. They stay there, though; Damon grasps Graham's hips, his fingers gripping Graham's behind, and then digging in, kneading the flesh through jeans. "Hey," Damon whispers, "just because it's news doesn't mean it's not good news." He presses his hips against Graham's, pulling Graham towards him, locking them together with the grip of his hands on Graham's ass. "Doesn't mean it's not news I'm happy to hear."

Graham is too stunned to say anything, too stunned to move, too shocked to move his face away when Damon kisses him back. No closed-mouth modesty from Damon; he sucks Graham's lips and slides his tongue into Graham's mouth. His tongue tastes of roses. Graham remembers his hands and slides them up Damon's sides, hunting for the tail of his T-shirt. He doesn't even mind that Damon's tongue is choking the breath out of him, that he's forgotten to breathe. His mind remains fixed on the goal of getting underneath Damon's shirt, being distracted every second by the pressure of Damon's hands on his ass, squeezing him and pressing the two of them tighter together.

When Graham touches bare belly skin, the kiss ends with a simultaneous sigh. Graham idly strokes the belly for a few seconds, catching his breath, then taking small nip-kisses from Damon's moist cheeks. "What are you gonna do about it?" Damon sighs in Graham's ear, moving his hips from side to side so that Graham can't possibly miss the heated bulge in Damon's own jeans, creating friction against Graham's.

"Nothing here," Graham says after a moment of distraction. His fingers slide down toward the waistband of Damon's jeans. "What do you want me to do about it?"

For a moment, they stare into each other's eyes from a distance of a few inches. In the dark, Damon's pupils are huge pools in the center of sky-coloured irises, Graham's eyes melting, begging, confused, desiring behind kiss-smudged lenses. "Whatever you want," says Damon.

"Could we go home?"

"Right now?" Damon is being no help for Graham's self-control; he unzips his jeans and unfastens the button and then takes Graham's hand and slides it down and inside, inviting - no, daring, demanding, Graham's touch. Graham hesitates, then takes hold of Damon's penis, wincing at the heat and weight of it. 

"Dunno... I can't think..."

"I can barely tell that you want me at all."

"Not here, Dames, please."

Damon pushes Graham away, knocking down a few coats and hangers. "Not here? So shy. I don't know why you bother. I thought you were bold. I thought you'd been watching me all night."

"I have," Graham tries to explain.

Damon laughs a little cruelly. "You have, eh. I've been watching _you_ since the schoolyard. I gave up ages ago."

Graham, enraged, makes a grab for Damon, intending to grab him by the hair and smack him in the face, but as soon as he touches Damon his intentions fly out the window and he melts back into kissing and rubbing and cuddling. Damon holds him tightly, thrusting their pelvises together again and again, rubbing his exposed cock against Graham's now-exposed belly, scraping the tender flesh against the waistband of Graham's jeans, slung low over lean hips. "Not here, eh?" Damon sighs, rocking back on his heels as Graham trails kisses down his neck and into the collar of his shirt. "You're right... I'm being a bastard. But we really out to get back out there, or people will wonder what we're up to in here."

"We're having a band meeting," says Graham. He unzips and frees his own penis, and leans into Damon, bringing them together. They suck in their breaths and sigh in unison. Graham congradulates himself on the effect. "We're deciding the future of the band."

***

Together they stumble into the rainy street, arms around each other, laughing and laddish. Damon bolts for an available taxi. "Let's press our luck, Leslie," he hisses to Graham, wrenching the door open and pushing Graham inside. He clambers in himself and shuts the door, telling the driver his address. As the taxi pulls away from the kerb, Damon leans forward to the driver and says, "Double fare for no hassles." He leans back to the seat and grabs Graham's face for a kiss.

The driver looks into his rearview mirror. "Oh, Christ," he moans.

Damon tears his face away from Graham's. "Double fare, mate, and whatever else I've got in my pockets. Just turn your music up, right?"

Damon's home isn't particularly near, and the fare will be high already… the driver sighs and sits back, cranking the knob on the radio. He's listening to Future Sound of London live on John Peel, and the clicks and hums and bleeps fill the cab."Just don't make a mess, OK?" the driver says.

Damon chuckles to himself, and glances back at Graham, sprawled in a startled heap on the seat. A wicked smile spreads across Damon's face. "Don't worry," he says, "we'll be very tidy." He bites Graham's chin, and Graham spasmodically licks Damon's nose and the corner of his eye.

"Been watching me all night, have you?" he murmurs, barely audible above the music. He runs his hands over Graham's shirt, lifting the hem, running his tongue down Graham's belly. Graham gasps, then holds his breath; Damon unfastens the button on Graham's jeans and yanks the zipper down. He pauses to wipe the trail of Graham's saliva from his eye, holds his hand palm out to Graham's mouth, waiting for Graham to lick it. Graham lets his tongue trail from one finger-valley to the next, leaving the palm wet. Damon uses the damp hand to extract Graham's stiff penis from his shorts, pulling it over the waistband and trapping it out in the open. He yanks it and slaps it a little, then immediately bends his head down to it.

"Oh, ka- _ROIST!_ " the driver yells again, smacking his steering wheel.

"Double f-f-fare," Graham whispers, meaning to shout it, but his breath is stolen away before he can use it. Damon immediately sucks the full length of Graham's cock into his mouth. "How do you do that?" Graham protests softly, one hand stroking through Damon's hair, pulling gently at the roots. Damon lets his head be pulled back, but as soon as Graham slackens his grip, he slides down again, taking even more in. "Shit!" says Graham, beginning to laugh. "You don't do things halfway, do you?"

Damon doesn't. Once he's got the whole length wet, he runs his tongue up along the underside of the shaft, then traces the blade of his tongue around the head, one direction and back the other, then gently sucks the head. Then his tongue goes down to the balls again, traces up, and starts again. Graham tries to relax and can't. "How did you… where did you learn to… to do that…" he gasps, feeling himself go lightheaded. He tries to grab for his shaft, to try to gain some kind of control over the situation, but Damon grabs Graham's wrist and forces his arm back to the seat by his head. Graham tries again with his other hand, but Damon slaps him away. Graham slumps in his seat. He's got no choice but to sit (or sprawl) still and let himself be ravished. At once, Damon increases his pace, and the strength of his sucking, and reaches under Graham's shirt and twists a nipple between his fingers.

Graham shudders and bucks. Involuntary moans trickle from his mouth. Damon twists the nipple harder, disturbs the rhythm of his mouth a little, then returns to it, faster and harder each time. He lets Graham's hand go and begins to stroke the moist shaft with his palm; as fast as the spit dries, Damon applies a fresh coat, thus ensuring a delicate balance between smooth comfort and near-painful friction.

He's been trying to maintain control, but there's no way Graham can hold himself together. "Damon," he calls softly, one hand getting lost in Damon's hair again, trying to pull Damon away. "Damon, no, wait, stop, you have to stop now, I can't take it…" Damon's head doesn't budge, and instead, he sucks even harder. "Damon!" Graham calls again, his voice cracking. "Stop! Now! Please! Oh God, oh God…"

"No, give it to me," Damon says, his words muffled by his mouthful. The taxi swerves violently, tossing them halfway across the backseat, but Damon remains fixed on, like a lamprey... Graham begins to laugh hysterically, pumping his hips, fucking himself into Damon's face, forgetting himself, washed away on a tide of swelling ecstasy. He only remembers why he wanted Damon to stop when it's already too late, and he can't contain himself any longer.

"Ohhh, Damon," Graham gasps, wanting to warn him or apologise, but Damon keeps sucking, catching the cool jets of semen in his mouth. Graham squeezes his eyes shut, humiliated and elated at the same time, sneering, grimacing, grinning, letting his mouth go entirely slack. He feels Damon's mouth slurp off, Damon's hand leaving his poor chafed tit, tucking Graham back into his jeans and fastening the button at his waist. Then Damon's lips on his open mouth, kissing hard, tongue unfurling into Graham's mouth, loosing a spill of come inside, like a love letter stuffed with strange flower petals.

Graham tries to move his face away, but Damon holds his head still, kissing him thoroughly, swishing the come around with spit and not letting Graham away until he's swallowed it. Then he lets go. Graham wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and scowls at Damon, who lies against him with a deeply satisfied smirk on his face. "You're foul," Graham mutters.

"Now you're foul too," Damon points out.

"I ought to've spit it at you."

"You spit it at me," Damon says, giggling. He gently pulls up Graham's zipper, pausing to tuck the still-engorged cock more securely inside. He kisses Graham again, and this time Graham doesn't protest. He throws his arms around Damon and rubs his chest against him. Only the taxi jerking to a halt breaks them apart, and they both go tumbling onto the floor.

The music goes down several notches. "Get out of my taxi and fuck off, you fairies," snaps the driver.

Damon looks around, stunned; he fumbles in his pocket for his wallet, and pulls all the money out. "That's double fare and then some, you bastard," he says, tossing the bills onto the front passenger seat, and follows Graham out onto the sidewalk outside Damon's house. "Bastard," he swears again under his breath, looking round him. "Oh, blimey, we're home! That was nice!"

Graham struggles with his zipper a bit more. "It's s-stuck, mate…"

"Never mind, here we are. Hopefully no one else is home." Damon marches to the front door, unlocks it, and throws it open.

 


	2. (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Later, that night, at Damon's, there's more. Much more. Hints of Dom/sub undertones.

No one is about at Damon's house, which is rare, since five people live there. Damon's room is upstairs and all the way in the back, with a lovely view of a brick wall and an unsafe fire escape. Damon runs inside and bolts for the stairs, taking them two at a time in the dark. Graham follows slowly, closing and locking the door behind him, feeling the weight of alcohol and post-coital disorientation on his head. He carefully mounts the stairs, holding the wall for support.

Upstairs Damon has turned on the lamp in his room, but he's not there. Graham settles onto Damon's mattress on the floor, takes off his glasses, and massages his temples. He feels giddy and ill. He wonders if he's already gone too far. The closest Damon and he had ever gotten to this was a very drunk makeout session on a dancefloor at the end of school exams, wondering if they'd ever see each other again, sodden teenagers in shrink-to-fit Levi's and Buzzcocks T-shirts, snogging and feeling each other up, their hard pricks like heavy hammers in their jeans pressed together. Graham had shoved Damon away and stormed out of the dancehall and gone home alone, brooding in the dark, jerking off and despising himself, hoping he never had to look into those dagger eyes again, having to face what he'd done, what he'd felt. Because it wasn't just the drink. He wanted Damon so desperately, and he didn't really want any other boy in that same way, and he saw Damon mucking about with an air of just-slightly-fashionable omnisexuality. Damon didn't care if it was a boy or a girl, he just wanted to have it off, and it meant nothing to him, although Graham knew that it did. But he never felt quite adequate for Damon.

And to have Damon suck him off in the taxi like a forty-year-old Hamburg whore, not even letting him touch himself-

To the soundtrack of a flushing toilet, Damon comes storming back into the room, slamming the door behind him. Graham lethargically looks up, and Damon hits him in the face with a damp washcloth. "Stand up," he commands, stripping off his shirt. "And for God's sake, smile - you look like a hooked trout."

Graham stands up with a deep sigh, and Damon seizes him by the shirt, the same way that Graham had done in the club, and slams him against the door, attacking his mouth with savage kisses. Graham wants to protest this kind of treatment, but he finds himself giving in, giving back 100%, biting Damon's lips, scraping his lower teeth against the soft stubble pricking up underneath Damon's lower lip. Damon leans back with a sigh, Graham's hands groping for his nipples. "Better, that," Damon says. "Participate, eh?" He sucks in his breath when Graham takes a nipple between his teeth. "Uhnnnn," Damon groans, pleased. "It's your turn, you know. Think you can do it?"

Graham arches an eyebrow. "I have to go on my knees, do I?"

"It's a classic," says Damon.

Another kiss, Damon's jeans strip off, and Graham's on his knees, sighing with frustration and anticipation. Damon's cock is annoyingly large and Graham never thought about how a few centimetres either way can make such an intimidating difference. "You're not gonna fuck me with this," Graham mutters, making a fist around the base of the shaft, holding it still and taking a good look at it. "You'd kill me."

"That's what they say," Damon says mildly. He puts his hand against the back of Graham's head and pushes him forward. "Go on. Take it. That was a lesson I gave you - that's how I like it. Think you can remember how I showed you?"

"Can't do it like you," Graham says, opening his mouth as wide as it will go and sliding his mouth down over Damon's freshly washed penis. Damon hisses his breath inward. Graham can only get about half of it down. "Can't do it," Graham repeats, a little sadly.

"Just do your best," Damon says, laughing softly. "I won't mind. Just go. It's the motion that's the most important. I call it 'crocheting' - draw down, circle, circle back, and then loop over the head and down. Right? Darn me a few socks, Coxon." He leans back and smiles at Graham's tentative attempts. "Just go. Yes. Do it hard. Don't worry about your teeth or anything, just - do it hard. There's no such thing as - ah! - too hard or too rough. Until there's blood flowing - ah! - it's not too rough."

Graham feels a sense of fleeting relief that Damon didn't try the same approach on him - he felt as insubstantial as tissue paper in comparison, his flesh far too delicate, despite his own harsh and awkward handling of himself - in response to the pressure of Damon's hands on the back of his head and neck, he loses the sense of the complexity of the crotchet pattern and simply sucks, pumping his mouth up and down over the head. Damon doesn't seem to mind that Graham is a bad pupil; his breath comes in laboured blasts through his nostrils, occasionally punctuated with an open-mouthed moan of encouragement. Graham takes a quick pause to catch his breath and pick a hair off his tongue, and Damon licks his hand and strokes himself quickly and roughly with it. "Keep going, please," Damon says, his voice thick and gravelly. "Please. Hmmmm. Hmmmm."

Graham had no idea it would be so difficult, so taxing, so addictive, so divine... Having a mouthful of his own spunk has given him extra tolerance for the taste of Damon's pre-ejaculate, flowing copiously, coating the insides of his cheeks. When he scrapes Damon's cockhead with his teeth, Damon makes a moan that wouldn't be out of place on a Prince B-side, and it makes Graham laugh inside. When Graham opens his eyes and looks up at Damon, he is shocked to find Damon meeting his gaze, his pupils vast black drinking pools, making his eyes look all black. Graham pulls back and lets his tongue rest on the tip of Damon's penis, underside down, and just looks into his eyes for a long moment. Damon smiles a little crooked smile, dimpling his reddened cheek. "What are you doing slacking?" he whispers, stroking Graham's hair near his ear, and Graham curls into him like a cat. "Don't stop now. Just go. Keep going. Begging you." And then a little louder, from the very depths of his belly, "I'm _begging_ you, Graham."

Graham nearly swoons, the swelling pressure in his jeans becoming painful. He takes a moment to rip down the broken zipper and expose himself, then takes Damon's cock in his hand and places it back into his mouth. Damon's breath sobs gratefully. His fingers twine into the soft thick hair at Graham's temple, moving him slowly but certainly up and down. "That's right," Damon mumurs. He hums and his breath gets deeper and faster. "I want to come in your mouth... can I come in your mouth, Graham?"

Graham opens one eye and fixes Damon's blissed-out face with it. "No," he says firmly, and returns to sucking and licking. He's rediscovered the pattern and finds it easier than just repetitive sucking, since it gives his jaw a chance to relax once in a while. Underneath and in front of him, Damon is trembling, and his fingers in Graham's hair clench tightly.

"Please?" Damon insists, his voice high and choked. "Can I beg you? Please? Can I come in your mouth? Please? I just want to see it. You can feed it back to me. I promise. I just want to. Please."

"No," says Graham again, injecting a note of indignance.

"Please," Damon begs again, and begins to softly laugh. "I'm foul, eh?"

Graham lifts his head and begins to gently, rhythmically pump with his hand on the shaft of Damon's penis, carefully not touching the head or squeezing too hard. He stares up at Damon's face again, but Damon has begun to be elsewhere, heavy-lidded eyes and parted lips being wet again and again with a desperate tongue. "I want to fuck you," Graham whispers.

"What?" Damon drawls, a reluctant child.

"I want to fuck you," says Graham again, a little louder this time. He squeezes firmly.

Damon emits a fragile gasp and shuts his mouth, shuts his eyes. "Would you?"

"Would I fuck you?"

"Because I want you to."

"You'd rather I fuck you than you unloading in my mouth?" Another squeeze. Graham smirks at Damon's shuddering response.

Damon lets his head droop forward, eyes still closed. "Would you?"

"Get on the bed," Graham says.

Damon melts, happy to be ordered about. He rummages around in his cupboard while Graham rids himself of his clothes. The air is warm and steamy from the day's brutal sun and the evening's rain. Graham doesn't treasure nakedness the way Damon does, but it does feel good. He glances at the lamp, considering turning it off, but then thinks better of it, watching Damon rubbing himself with the washcloth, toying with a tube of lubricant. Graham wants to watch him, see his responses.

When Graham joins Damon on the bed there has to be a moment of just kissing and touching. Graham can still taste semen in Damon's mouth. Their cocks struggle to find each other. Damon rubs Graham's back with the washcloth, strokes his ass and thighs with it, seizes the tender white flesh of Graham's neck with his teeth and bites down. Before Graham can yelp out in pain, the pain has gone, leaving only sensitivity. He repays Damon for this by pinching Damon's nipple with his fingernails, but Damon only purrs and arches his back like a kitten. "I can't hurt you, can I?" Graham chuckles, rubbing the lovebite on his neck, throbbing like a new erogenous zone has just been implanted.

"Do me?" Damon whispers.

"How do you want it?" Graham murmurs back, the hairs on his spine standing up and tingling. "Over under? Doggy style? Sideways?" He laughs at himself. He loves to sling absurd pillow-talk.

"I want to be able to kiss you," says Damon.

Graham, at least, has done this before. He knows the mechanics of ass-fucking. He coats his penis with what seems to be an excessive amount of lubricant, skins on a condom, coats _it_ with even more lube until it's dripping, props one of Damon's long muscular thighs over his hips, finds the dark crevice, the sweet spot, applies gentle but steadily increasing pressure. Damon bites his lip to keep from yelping. It's always a surprise; it's never easy at first; it takes time. Graham has to stop for a second to regain control of himself; he's so close to coming right now, but he mustn't. He mustn't. He has to give it to Damon. More pressure and a slight twist. A drop of blood emerges between Damon's clenched teeth.

"Is the blood flowing yet?" Graham asks, shoving in firmly. "Is the blood flowing? you bastard, is it flowing?" He closes his eyes, feeling the flood of Damon's semen spreading between their bellies, fucking in more and more definitely. Damon grasps Graham's buttocks and pulls him in, groaning through blood-stained clenched teeth, then lets his mouth fall open in a long sigh. Graham rocks his torso back, forcing his hips forward. There, now, regular fucking, hard and slow. Damon gasps in rhythm with his thrusts. "Ah, that's good, eh? That's good." Damon tenses and moans again, his penis unleashing another spurt of semen, and Graham smooths it over his stomach with his hand. He holds his cummy fingers up to Damon's mouth and shoves them in. Damon feebly flicks at the fingers with his tongue. He's relaxed. He's spent. He's had his.

Graham is suddenly exhausted, his hips moving slower and more gently. "I can't get off," he mutters. "It's... I'm too drunk." He laughs quietly, fucks a bit more, then lets Damon push him out. His erection is gone. He strips his penis naked, scrubbing the lube off himself with the washcloth, then lays back on top of Damon, mucking himself up again with all of Damon's come. Damon wraps his arms around Graham and kisses his ear passionately.

Graham relaxes and lies alongside, and Damon rolls onto his side, unwilling to stop holding him. He pulls the blankets over them. He tucks his head under Graham's chin, kissing the bruised spot on his neck. "Thank you for getting dirty with me," Damon whispers in the sensitised ear.

Graham laughs a little more. "You're thanking _me_?"

"Go to sleep," Damon says.

"Let me turn the light out."

"Come right back."

In the dark, huddled together under thin blankets, they continue to trade little kisses and caresses, letting their breaths slow together. From downstairs comes the sound of the door opening, and noisy drunk student housemates coming in. Graham and Damon both blink at the dark ceiling, listening, then relax and have another kiss. "Make me breakfast?" Graham mumbles comfortably.

"All right," Damon agrees.

"What's for breakfast?"

"Porridge," Damon says.

"Porridge? God."

"There's nothing else. I'm broke now, I spent fifty-three quid on the taxi."

"That's fucked up, man."

"Yeah... worth it though, eh?"

Graham nods instead of replying, kissing the new wound in Damon's lip. They fall asleep at once.


	3. (3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's morning, and everything has changed." An ordinary day of band practice for four brilliant, ambitious, maybe-sorta-talented London lads - and, later, a bath (and a spliff) for new lovers.

_she's so high  
_ _I want to fall all over her_

Graham skips out on the porridge. When Damon wakes, there's a soft dent where Graham used to be, and a pair of jeans missing from his closet. Damon is devastated and relieved at the same time. He had hoped Graham would stick around, enjoy a little morning tumble with him when Damon's at his best, and then eat the breakfast that Damon fully intended to make. But Graham had actually woken up before Damon, which is rare in and of itself, and gotten dressed and left, so he must have really wanted to go. Damon stretches and rolls over in bed, not yet ready to face the gray, already-hot morning, and grabs his notebook, sniffing his arms and his knees, smelling Graham all over him.

Damon has a wank, then writes a couple of bad poems, then has another wank, then gets up and goes to band practise. They practise every day for three hours minimum; it's a rule that he had decided upon, and even if two and a half hours are devoted to drinking beer and horsing around, the group knows their songs, constantly rehashing and revising and getting to the meat of what they want to say. He arrives earlier than anyone else, as usual, and amuses himself playing Dave's drums with pencils and making up tunes to Yeats poems.

Dave shows up before too long, frowning at Damon. "Get off my kit," he whines, only half-joking.

"What? Get off your dick?" Damon throws the pencils at him. "How're you doing this fine noon?"

"Not half as well as you." Dave arches his eyebrows and smiles. "You're awfully sunny today." He settles his lanky body behind the drums and pulls drumsticks out of his bag.

"Am I?" Damon grins. "Am I glowing?" He slinks his way over to his keyboard and plugs it into an amplifier.

Dave punctuates Damon's cheeky statement with a rimshot on his crash cymbal. Then he grimaces and rubs his forehead."Ugh. You never get hangovers, do you?"

"You know I do. Just not today. I slept it off," Damon lies. He never had a hangover - he woke up feeling besmirched and shagged-out and wonderful. He smiles, his whole body remembering the delicious oddity. _Sweet Graham. Sweet, sweet Graham._

"You wanked it off, you mean. Let's work on that problem song before the Glimmer Twins show up - I can barely hear myself think through their constant bellowing."

Damon and Dave work through the problem completely, and amuse themselves trading drum fills and yelps, before Alex and Graham arrive, giggling and reeking of lunchtime pints. Damon turns away from them, struggling to maintain his composure - an hour late and already drunk? But oh, there they are, glowing Alex and luminous Graham, beaming and cheerful and noisy and bumping into things. When Damon turns round again, both of them have their guitars out and stand impatiently tossing their hair and sneering at him. "Ready to go?" Damon asks pleasantly, looking past Graham's ear. _That was last night; get over it, it's nothing, it was a laugh. Forget it. That is not the same drunk lad who you molested last night. It's morning, and everything has changed._

"Always ready to go," Graham replies.

Damon shivers.

"We brought beer," Alex pipes up.

"Give us one," Dave grins. He catches a tossed can. "Hair of the dog, Dez?"

"Yeah," Damon agrees slowly, "cheers, Alex."

Practise is electric... the beer disappears and Dave is sent round to an off-license to get more, as he's the only one with money in his pockets. Alex stands in the corner by himself, practising walking bass lines with a smouldering cigarette clenched in his lips, and Graham leans over Damon on the keyboard. Damon lights a cigarette and takes a drag, then holds it for Graham to do the same. His lips brush against Damon's fingers and Damon quivers so much that he drops the cigarette. "Oh shit," he says, diving to retrieve it. Graham watches him with a crooked smile.

"Busy later?" Graham asks under his breath when Damon straightens up again.

"No more than usual," Damon replies quietly, glancing at the oblivious Alex. "Pub and then home to write, y'know."

"Come over for a bath?" Graham offers. "I've got some grass off Alex."

Damon arches his eyebrow. "Are you drunk?"

"No," Graham says, pretending to be offended. "I've been drinking -" _all day_ \- "but I'm not drunk." He looks at Damon over the tops of his glasses and bites his lower lip, flutters his eyelashes a little bit. It would be comical if it wasn't so cussedly sexy, and he knows it.

Damon just stares, a little slackjawed. He startles when Dave comes roaring back into the room with cases of lager under his arms, then glances round the room. "All right," Damon says to Graham in an innocent way, like he's been asked to go record shopping. "I'll see you there later."

***

A rainbow-coloured lightbulb in the lamp, a bottle of cheap and grotty sherry, a joint as thick as Damon's thumb, children's tub toys, a boom box playing Nick Drake, and a monstrously large old claw-foot tub big enough to fit both Damon and Graham in, make up the evening. Granted, knees rise out of the water, and arms have to hang over the sides, but so much the better for keeping the spliff from getting wet. As the sherry bottle gets drained, its empty shell joins the floating army of rubber ducks and tugboats on the surface of the milky water.

Graham runs wet fingers through the back of his hair. "It's gone," he mourns, bobbing the bottle with his fingertip.

Damon, with a headful of shampoo suds, relights the stump of the joint and leans back, exhaling a thick cloud of smoke with a twist of his mouth. "Good, it was shit," he says. "Hold this, would you? I need to rinse." He hands the joint to Graham and disappears under the water.

Graham takes a lazy drag, already ferociously stoned but enjoying himself, and startles a little bit when Damon resurfaces with a bite to Graham's belly. "You bastard!" Graham yells, splashing. Rubber ducks go cascading onto the already wet floor. "And look, Sherlock, the spliff's gone out. Look what you've done with your absurdities -" He gets cut off, mid-rant, with Damon's demanding kiss. He tosses the soaked remnants of the joint into the corner.

Damon breaks off the kiss and stares deeply into Graham's eyes. "This is the only good thing about your home, you know," Damon says.

"So you've said before."

"That, and the fact that you're here."

Graham notices that Damon is now nearly lying on top of him, and their limbs are tangled and bunched up in the limited room inside the tub. "Water's gone cold," he murmurs. "We should get out."

"Right," Damon agrees, sitting up. The water had gone cold ages ago, but neither of them had particularly noticed or minded, since the room was still hot from earlier in the day. He stands, steadying himself with the towel rack on the way, and breaks into a smile and a sigh when Graham leans forward and plants a kiss on his lower belly. He flinches and gasps when Graham sinks his teeth into the lower rim of his navel. "Ow! Are you trying to leave marks?"

"I've got one," Graham replies, sliding his arms up over Damon's hips and resting his cheek against Damon's thigh. "Can you see it?"

Damon regards the side of Graham's neck, where he'd taken his nip last night. "It's not even visible, you girl. Stop whining." Damon rubs his thumb in the approximate area. "I'd have had to hang on to leave a mark. I mean, I can, if you want."

"Go to my room," Graham says. "Get ready, eh?"

Damon lets out a slightly nervous laugh. "I only love you for your bathtub, you know," he says, stepping out of the tub onto the wet tile floor, kicking aside a stray rubber duckie.

Graham's bed, like Damon's, is a mattress on the floor, but Graham's floor is a hazardous minefield of books and records and clothes and empty packets of crisps. Ordinarily, Damon would be annoyed by the mess, but for now it just fills him with the sensation of fondness. He sits on the mattress, moving aside some more clothes and empty cigarette packets, and takes his clothes off again. He hated having to get dressed just to go into Graham's room, but there are halls and doorways that he had to pass to get there, and people there, and they already got an odd look or two from the other residents of the flat. He wouldn't think it would be any great big deal; he'd been round dozens of times before, often just to take a bath there, and more than once, he'd be in the bath and Graham would accompany him and sit on the toilet and play guitar while Damon bathed.

_How strange that we never went so far before._

He leaves the light off, enjoying the murky colours of the falling dusk that barely make it in through the barred windows, lying facedown on Graham's bed. He doesn't move when he hears Graham come in and shut the door, drawing the latch, locking them in. He doesn't move when he feels Graham's mouth come down onto his back, or when Graham's teeth viciously sink into his left buttock, or when Graham's fingers rake down his back from shoulders to thighs.

Graham sits back, looking down at his friend in confusion. "Dez," he asks tentatively. Damon doesn't turn over or say anything, but his fingers have clenched the pillow, and goose pimples cover his body. Graham smiles to himself, and lies full-length on top of Damon, taking Damon's hands and pulling them up over his head. More gooseflesh, and a deepening of Damon's breath that Graham can feel flowing through him.

"All boldness gone, isn't it?" Graham mocks silkily, enjoying himself. He takes a bite of Damon's neck near the shoulder. "D'you want me to leave marks? I could cover you with bruises, if that's what you want. No, wait. I don't care what you want." Damon rolls his hips underneath Graham. Graham bites his ear, a little more gently. He purrs again, all silk and menace, "I don't care what you want. I'm gonna take you. Let's see if I can get blood flowing."

Damon's only answer is a chuckle that's both sensual and apprehensive

Graham has his own tube of the same lubricant Damon has (bought on Damon's recommendation, and more than half used up already; Graham gets laid a lot more often than anyone suspects). He sets it onto the bed within reach, instead running his tongue over the bumps and channel's of Damon's spine, through the soft patch of down at the base of the spine, and between the two round hillocks of Damon's ass. Damon curls his feet together, silent again, but unable to remain still, and Graham pulls Damon's buttocks apart and his tongue continues its journey down. "Open your _fucking_ legs," Graham snaps, elbowing Damon's thighs apart. "Up on your knees. Do it. Now, I said." Damon balances himself on his shoulders and angles his hips up, but it's not quite enough for Graham, who pushes Damon's hips up and forward until his behind is in the air and his face vanishes into the mound of pillows and clothes at the head of the bed.

Graham grunts softly in satisfaction at this posture, then proceeds to tongue him out sloppily. Damon's shoulders squirm and his toes curl, but he doesn't move more than that; he emits some soft squeaking noises, muffled by the pillow. Graham pulls his mouth away and reaches for the lube, slurping the excess of saliva off his lips back into his mouth. He loves the texture of the smooth, clean skin on his tongue, the faint flavour of cheap soap and the beginning of a trace of sweat between the cheeks. He begins to talk, a rude hissing half-whisper, as he squirts lube onto his right fingers. "How many times have you had this hole of yours fucked?" Graham asks, rubbing the lube between his fingers to warm it, and then easing his middle finger up to the knuckle into Damon's anus. Damon startles just a little. "Last night wasn't the first time; I can tell. Who else? Who else has fucked you?" Damon says nothing, and Graham takes his middle finger out, sticks his index finger in instead, then puts both in at once. Even through the pillows and jeans in which Damon's face is buried, Graham can hear Damon moan. "Yeah, no, I couldn't do this so easily if you weren't such a little whore. Except that you're not a whore, because you don't do it for money. You give it away. Don't you? You love it." Graham fucks his fingers in. Damon's toes grip Graham's sides, and his hips subtly rock back and forth, riding Graham's fingers. Graham wipes his wet mouth against Damon's thigh, and gives him a bite for good measure. Ahead of him, Graham can see Damon's stiff cock twitching, leaking beads of moisture. Graham has the urge to grab it and spank Damon off, stick his tongue into Damon's mouth and catch his orgasm-screams in his own throat, and he knows that Damon also wants this, but Graham restrains himself. It's not what he has in mind. He's through with what Damon wants. But at the same time, Graham wonders if he is still, even now, being manipulated.

_Second guessing, third guessing, chucking it all out the window and just running with what I want..._

Graham sits back onto his heels, pulls his right-hand fingers free and replaces them with the fingers of his left hand. "Do you enjoy being fucked like a girl?" he muses, tearing a condom wrapper with his teeth, watching Damon twisting and riding the fingers, so eager that he's unable to keep still. "Is there something in your nature that makes you need to be the girl sometimes? You need Graham to fuck you?" Damon makes a faint sound, and two drops of seminal fluid drip off his belly, one right after the other. "Or am I just the latest in a string of random boy-fucks?"

Damon slowly shakes his head. Graham slaps his ass with his now-idle right hand, rises from his kneel, and takes himself in hand. "Don't lie to me, slut," he curses through gritted teeth, sliding his prick up the damp channel between Damon's ass cheeks. Graham falls silent for a moment, savouring the feeling of slick warmth and pressure against his own penis, wondering if he shouldn't just stop here, take the stupid condom off, rub himself to ecstasy against the base of Damon's spine, watch his own spunk arch out and splash on the sleek pale skin of Damon's lower back... but it isn't what he really wants. It isn't in the plan. And Damon wants to be fucked; he can feel it in his fingers, the way his muscles grab him, part to admit him, tremble with pleasure at the penetration. He wants something deeper, and just getting spunked on won't do it. Graham draws in his breath, and slides the head of his cock against the slippery fingers of his left hand, forcing his cock inward, momentarily along with his fingers. Damon takes a deep gasp and tenses up; Graham withdraws his fingers and pushes his penis in further.

"That's what I call 'threading the needle'," Graham mutters through clenched teeth. "It never fails. You're not the only one with terms. Loosen that arse, slut, let me fuck you." He leans over and hisses into Damon's ear. " _Fuck you_. Like you want it. _Right?_ Like you beg me to do?" Graham slides himself in all the way, then loses himself in the sensation for a moment, running his hands along Damon's body, his arms, his ribs, his flanks, Graham's hands ending up on Damon's hips. "Oh God. I'm gonna go insane. You _are_ trying to drive me mad, aren't you?" Graham makes a few slow, determined thrusts, sweat breaking out all over his body in cool sheets, grips Damon's hips, and lets himself go, fucking as hard and fast as he can. After a few anguished moans into the pillow, Damon falls silent again, choking back his cries, even the choked sounds being lost in Graham's furious litany.

"That's right! You feel that now don'tcha? Take it all like the dribbling whore you are. You know how long I've wanted to do this and couldn't ask? Do you?" He pushes Damon's face further down into the pillows, then returns both hands to Damon's hips, using them as handles to slam himself in harder. Graham's head begins to fill with white-noise static and he no longer has any idea what's coming out of his mouth - it comes in faint waves through the roaring of blood in his ears... "Take it you fucking bitch! Fucking bitch! You lovely fucking gorgeous bitch!" Shagging his way to enlightenment in the form of a blistering orgasm that seems to start in the bones of his ankles and streaks up like lightning to encompass his balls and his guts and his spine and blasts through the top of his head and out his mouth in a long, sobbing moan.

After all that, ejaculating is a glorious, messy, sloppy afterthought.

Graham is unable to relax for a long while, can't stop the sliding of his still-hard cock inside Damon, although his goal has been reached and he can't get any deeper. The white noise inside his head recedes a little bit, allowing him to open his eyes. He is blinded for a second, and he has to blink away stinging hot tears from his dry eyes. His cheeks are coated with tears, his chin with saliva. Below him, Damon's back is covered with bright red scratches and slap marks, and when Graham releases his clenched fingers, Damon's ass bears the marks of his fingers in swollen pink.

Graham runs his shaking hands through his hair, pulls out, drops the overflowing condom into an empty cigarette packet. Damon lies flat on his face on the bed, his legs over the sides of the mattress where Graham had dragged him. Graham's knees are raw. He wants to stick his fingers back into Damon's asshole, but he knows how sore it must be. Damon still hasn't moved except for his slow, deep breathing. Graham gently rubs the finger grab-marks with the side of his hand. "Damon?" he whispers into Damon's ear, lying on top of him, kissing the side of his neck. "Damon? Are - are you all right?" When he doesn't get an immediate response, Graham slides off to the side, the direction where (he thinks) Damon's facing. "Say something?"

Damon rises slowly and slightly off the bed to prop himself onto his left elbow. Graham can see the massive puddle of semen left on his blanket, where Damon was lying. Graham stares at the puddle, boggled - he's never seen so much spunk outside of pornos, and he can't help but wonder how many orgasms' worth it's made of, wonder if he's ever come that much himself in one night. He doesn't think so. Damon opens his eyes and gives Graham a faint shadow of his naughtiest smile. "Best fuck I ever had," Damon says, his voice reduced to a smoky growl that Graham has never heard before. When Damon rolls over a bit more, he winces. "Ow. You owe me one."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Graham blinks some more at Lake Wet Spot. He wonders if it's soaked into his mattress, joining with the year's worth of semen stains he put there himself. Damon just chuckles, and Graham feels his already flushed face get very hot. "No. No, you don't mean _that._ You know I couldn't. I'm not like you!"

"Oh you are," Damon replies, dragging Graham across the bed and into his arms. Graham recoils from the cold wet area, but Damon rolls over on top of him and pins him down into it, and soon it's warm and wet underneath his thighs. "You are, you just don't know it yet."

"Noooo..." Graham shakes his head, laughing uneasily. "No, I'm really not."

"Sssh. You don't know what I'm talking about anyway. Don't worry, I won't hurt you. I promise."

"Damon, I have to get this blanket off, I'm getting squicked out by it," Graham babbles nervously, struggling away and rolling onto the floor. He takes hold of the edge of the blanket. "Could you move, please?"

Damon lies there on his side, a huge gloating smile on his face, refusing to move. Graham sighs impatiently. "Just relax," Damon says. "Nothing's going to happen tonight. You fucked the fight right out of me. Just... you'll see."

Graham swallows and looks away. _I_ have _been manipulated,_ he thinks. _He set me up and I fell for it._ And out of nowhere, one of the strong shuddery aftershocks from his orgasm rushes through his body, reducing him to a quivering mass of goose pimples, losing his mind, returning to it to find himself in Damon's arms, on a pile of clothes on the floor, being covered with avid kisses.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Glimmer Twins" = a nickname for Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.


	4. (4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can't keep a secret for long from Alex, who really *is* the cleverest, even if he doesn't really draw the correct conclusion about what he perceives and is also a bit of a dick about it? He's Alex. But he's not wrong; the tension it introduces into the young group has consequences basically right away. Gentle warning for character-and-setting-appropriate homophobia for this chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A double update today.
> 
> Note: "Alex James" is one of my favorite characters I've ever written - to my surprise, when I read his first book, I realized that it's not incredibly different from the way the real Alex James writes, but he's smarter than me, of course, so he's funnier than I am. I gave it my best try.

Neither of them leaves this morning.

Graham wakes to find himself lying on top of Damon, arms around Damon's waist and cheek pressed against Damon's belly, lying between Damon's slightly spread and bent knees, Damon's hand in his hair, petting him aimlessly, like petting a cat. Graham stretches comfortably, his arms pressing into Damon's hipbones, then, melting, relaxes back again. Graham doesn't ever want to move again. Usually he's not comfortable sleeping on top of someone else, or underneath them for that matter, but this time, his shoulders rest just right, and beneath him, Damon is firm but yielding, like the best beds should be.

Graham does open his eyes, though, to check the light and the time; he had, earlier this week, planned to go to the library early and study for his exams before band practise (which seemed to take up most of his life these days!), but then he'd run into Alex on the way to practise the day before, and as they were both quite early, decided to go down the pub for lunch and a few drinks. And then Alex had made him pay for lunch, but traded him six grams of the grass that his flatmates grew. In his drunken haze he remembered that he had actually pulled _Damon_ the night before. And all he could think of for the rest of the day was getting back into Damon's pants. _Besides those jeans I stole… far too long in the leg_...

The long flesh legs of Damon gently wrap themselves around Graham's midsection, breaking him out of his weird remembering reverie. Graham blinks sleep out of his eyes and looks up into Damon's sleep-puffy face, unsmiling but with an unmistakable softness around his moist lips. Damon lowers his eyelashes, not quite closing his eyes, and lets his head roll back a few degrees onto the pillow. The hand in Graham's hair presses him forward and down.

Graham looks in front of him. He is mere inches from the thick, pinkish-purple head of Damon's penis, standing hard and ready at attention with the kind of agonising insistence that only comes in the morning. Graham smiles at it, quirks his eyebrow, and gives it a kiss to be polite. Damon's torso spasms, and he gasps passionately, like he's been waiting for hours for the kiss. Graham feels a sharp pang - _I'd do anything to hear him make that sound again_ \- and he opens his mouth to let his tongue touch the spot where he'd just kissed.

Not the same sound, but a better one.

This is how Graham wakes - never sucking, knowing that it would set Damon off, but kissing, licking, moving his mouth around on the surface. His mouth is terribly dry this early, on a morning after drinking and smoking cannabis, but it doesn't seem to bother Damon at all, and Graham actually enjoys the sensation of their mucous membranes sticking to each other, and then peeling away. And quickly anyway, Damon's seminal fluid makes the inside of his mouth all slimy and slippery. Damon's hands, fumbling for the shaft of his cock, keep bumping into Graham's face until Graham swats the hands away.

Damon lifts Graham's chin with the fingertips of one hand, and gazes into Graham's eyes. The other hand begins to slowly stroke himself off. "Do you trust me?" Damon whispers.

Graham's brain is still so smudgy with lust, sleep, and hangover that he can't respond at all for a few seconds, blinking at the soft-focus morning Damon, so terribly beautiful and romantic. At last Graham twists his lips into a smile. "No," he says.

The light touch of Damon's fingertips on Graham's chin suddenly grows firm, too firm for the startled Graham to resist, and Damon's long thumb snakes up and catches in the corner of Graham's mouth. "You owe me one," Damon reminds him, softly choking on his breath and making the faintest, but most lovely grimace. Too late, Graham tries to close his mouth; his teeth clamp down on Damon's thumb at the same moment as a thick rope of semen jets between his lips. Graham spits it out, but he knows he will never forget the taste of the intermingled blood, cigarette-smoke-sweat, and come - so unbelievably savage and carnal that it makes his mind recoil. Damon's grip on his hair holds Graham's head steady, though, until Graham's lips and chin and neck are all smeared. "How dare you say those things to me," Damon sighs. "Just because you fuck me better than anyone else ever has doesn't give you the right to be cruel." Damon then slides his bitten thumb back into Graham's mouth. "Is my blood better? Do you prefer my blood? Suck it, make it better-”

"Don't make me fuck you again," threatens Graham, scrubbing his chin with his fist and sliding up the bed by pushing his feet against the tangled blankets and cast-aside clothes. "Or maybe a cock in your mouth would shut you up, you pornography-addicted, insensitive arsehole. You have to cut it out with the jiz, mate, all right? It's not OK."

"I've got a very sensitive arsehole, thank you very much," Damon responds lazily, stroking Graham's nipple. "You saw to that, didn't you?" His fingernails pinch hard, and Graham gasps. "You love it anyway. Don't you?" Damon wraps his legs around Graham's, holding him in place. One hand trails a leisurely path down Graham's belly while the other brutalises a nipple. "You wouldn't be fucking me if you didn't love it. I'll cut the money-shots if you'll stop calling me a bitch. Be nice to me."

Graham closes his eyes again, arching against Damon's hip. He feels like he's falling. "Please get me off - I don't care how, whatever you like -“

"Better."

***

Dave has never seen Alex so angry.

Alex is always late to band practise, and Damon always gives him a reprimand, sometimes gentle and kidding, sometimes cold, sometimes catty. Unbeknownst to Damon, Alex really _has_ been making a concerted effort to arrive at practise early, and today, for the first time, he makes it there, not just on time, but fifteen minutes early. In fact, he's the first one there, and walks around the little studio grinning and smoking before anyone else arrives. He's got fifteen minutes to himself before Dave arrives; Alex leaps up too eagerly to let him in."Hi there Dave," Alex greets him with a little smirk of superiority. "I'm the only one here so far - I guess I must be early! I've even beaten the Poet Laureate today," he gloats. "How often does this happen?"

Dave shrugs. "Uh, never?" he guesses. "We should, er, start, I suppose. We don't have to wait for them to show up, you know. This band is a democracy and we should exercise our bodies, so we can be fit in case of violent revolution." He sits on his stool and practises a few thumps of the bass drum, then looks up and says in all sincerity, "All oppressed people must someday destroy the ruling class."

"I'm not oppressed people," Alex says. "And if Damon's the ruling class, I'm a tin of spam. And I'm ready for whatever violent revolution might happen - side with the winners."

Dave and Alex don't really play together too much; the rhythm section of the band is actually comprised of Dave and Damon, and Graham and Alex both think of themselves as lead players and completely autonomous entities. Therefore, Alex and Dave tune their instruments, try to play together, get bored, go and fetch a bottle of blended whiskey from the pub, then come back and begin screwing around with instruments that they don't know anything about.

Even that fun activity gets boring after a while. Dave begins idly and drunkenly leafing through a new issue of MONDO2000, and Alex necks whiskey and broods. Maybe Graham has passed out in a pub on the way over, and maybe Damon's teaching Alex a nasty lesson... _but would Damon do that?_ Alex lights another cigarette and stares at a frayed patch in the soundproofing. _Damon's a fairly decent chap, really - he's been riding me for the last couple of weeks because I_ have _been late every single time. Yes, I show up every time, even when I'm not feeling so well, and I dazzle everyone with the inventiveness of my work, but I_ am _late, and we_ did _agree, and he's right to be annoyed with me. But annoyed enough that he'd be this late just to punish me?And where the hell is Graham?_ Alex probably likes band practise the least of all of them, and yet he's traumatised that time is being wasted when they could be playing together, that there might actually be a day when there isn't any band practise... He gets red in the face and begins to pace the floor, chain-smoking and spitting "Fuck!" at intervals.

Graham and Damon both sway in at the same time, so unsteady on their feet that Alex wonders if they've been out drinking heavily and forgot the time. But no, both of them smell spring-fresh and clean, and their eyes, though puffy and heavy-lidded, don't have the specific puffy, heavy-liddedness that comes from alcohol. In fact, it looks like they've both just got out of the shower. Alex takes no time to appreciate the cleanliness of his bandmates, and gives them a piece of his mind. He lurches forward, wagging his finger.

"Two hours late. Two hours late! Look at Dave there, he's reading a porno mag, waiting for you two!"

Dave glances up and grins crookedly. "It's about digital culture," he corrects.

"It's a porno mag," Alex insists, not looking at Dave, "where the babes wear bras and pants with fractals on them, don't kid yourself, Dave, all right? Anyway, I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about _you_ two and your two hours late!"

Graham immediately slinks away, but Damon stands there like a stoned bunny in headlamps, blinking and looking immensely sorry. "Is it that late?" Damon murmurs. "I'd no idea. We're a bit high. Sorry to keep you waiting." He walks over to pick up a tambourine, and trades a glance with Graham. Graham then glances at Alex, and his expression is exactly the same as that of a dog who has eaten the Sunday roast in the other room, and knows that you don't know it yet.

Alex feels a slap of alarm, even through the cushion of half a dozen whiskies, but only gapes disbelievingly - _are you seeing this?_ \- at Dave, who is smiling his usual mellow, happy whiskey smile. "I've got a headache," Alex mutters to no one in particular.

***

The headache persists over the next couple of days, getting stronger whenever he sees Damon and Graham together, particularly when they think no one is looking. They keep shooting each other ambiguous glances, turning away from each other with stricken expressions on their faces, brushing against each other "accidentally", and worst of all, showing up to practise late every single day, almost always within minutes of each other, if not at once. Alex keeps on staring at Dave whenever he sees anything like this happen, but Dave is always either reading something, playing drums, or smiling blankly and agreeably. Alex begins to have trouble sleeping, wondering if he's been thrust into a parallel universe, if the Body Snatchers have been at work, if the cannabis his flatmates grew isn't contaminated with something. But Alex has smoked a ton of it (especially this week, trying to get to sleep), and he's not going about acting strange. He wonders if he's just paranoid.

He hopes that whatever weirdness it is won't mess up their upcoming gig - they're trying out new and improved songs, the "we're serious about getting signed" songs, hoping to pique interest. Alex himself is in fighting form - he can play almost all of his basslines without looking at his hands, and if there's anything he despises, it's a shoegazer. Damon and Graham play perfectly well at practise without any more weird looks or frottage, and Dave is superb as long as he isn't too drunk (and Alex has never seen him so drunk he can't play) so after the last practise, a soundcheck at the venue, Alex feels reassured and ready to play the gig later that night.

Alex stays behind to tear down Dave's drum kit, feeling cheerful for the first time that week. Dave is happy for the help and the company, although he doesn't specifically need either; he can do it himself in a couple of short minutes, but Alex being there means that he can also bum cigarettes and share whiskey out of the flask and talk the nervousness about the gig out of his mind. "You all right for the show tonight?" Alex asks him straight away.

"Yeah, no problems." Dave takes a hefty swallow out of the flask, shakes it to hear the volume level, and frowns when it swishes instead of sloshes. "I'm confident." He takes another slug, just to make sure.

Alex squints at the drummer, whose face is bright pink. Perhaps from lifting. "Yeah, right you are," Alex kidded him. "It's not you I'm worried about, it's those two." He didn't have to specify which two he meant. "I don't know what's been up with them this week - it can't be anxiety, can it? They've been acting really strange. I dunno, maybe I'm imagining things."

"No - They're fucking," Dave says. He heaves a bass drum into the back.

Alex laughs, then gives Dave a worried look. "No way,” Alex says. Dave grins, unconcerned. "You can't be serious," Alex says, shaking his head. Dave shrugs, taking a cymbal out of Alex's unprotesting hand. "I mean, _what?_ That’s practically _incest._ “

"God, open your eyes, Alex," says Dave. "Don't worry, it's just a phase. This usually happens after some bloke gets really into David Bowie for the first time, before they come to their senses and realise that Bowie was going through a phase himself. But 'ere, watch out, one of them might be after your arse next." Dave bursts into churlish laughter.

"I'm appalled at the suggestion!" Alex gapes.

"I thought you'd be flattered," says Dave with a shrug. "Sorry. Sometimes I want to be witty, too. But I'm staying out of it. It's between them and -" He shrugs again. " _Sure_ you're ready for a revolution? You ought to be."

Alex can't say anything else - too many options crowd his mind - so he he goes home and gets changed and then heads straight for the nearest pub outside the venue for pints and darts, the former to steady his nerves, and the latter to keep a handle on how steady he is. He reaches a near-perfect state of drunkenness just before the band is due on stage. He finds to his dismay that he's not the only one in a perfect state of drunkenness, but Dave is perfectly rotten, Graham is perfectly moaning and difficult, and Damon is in full vocal- and wrist-exercise diva heaven, which means he's terrified. Alex sighs. _So I'm to be the one to hold it all together tonight,_ he decides. _So be it._

And the band plays an incredible set; all those months of near-daily practise have paid off, and Alex is lost in the contemplation of the way they sound like a house on fire, building to a huge conflagration of perfect chaotic flaming peaks. They close the set with their newest song, "Come Together", which had finally been worked through this week, and Alex finally relaxes enough into what he's doing ( _fucking shoegazing!_ ) that he spares a look up at Damon and Graham, to make sure neither of them is heading for him on a collision course.

He needn't have worried; Damon and Graham are jumping in place a few yards away from him, eyes locked together as Damon howls the words. "You must be mad, and you know you are; you should have known I'd do anything for you - so why, _why_ \- can't we come together?" From where he sits, Alex can see that their pupils are wildly dilated, and both of them have furious hard-ons.

And Alex sobers up fast.

He resents that. He doesn't like to sober up for any reason, let alone abruptly, on stage, in the middle of a song. _Here's your violent revolution, Dave!_ Alex clutches his bass and makes a dash for Graham, knocking both him and Damon clean over and bashing Graham's head with the tuning board. Best thing about being in a band is that you can beat up your mates and then say it was in the heat of passion.

After the show, Alex very generously sends Graham ahead to the pub to put some ice on the lumps in his head and order them all a round, and watches Dave run out the back way to puke and then not come back, leaving Alex and Damon to tear down and move the drum kit, guitars, and Damon's keyboard and percussion. While they are doing this, in between fending off the enthusiastic well-wishers, Alex says to Damon, "Want to smoke a joint on the way to the pub?" Damon, red-faced and hysterically post-gig-relieved, happily accepts.

To be able to smoke a whole joint, they have to walk around two blocks, slowly. Damon's still wound up, bouncing on the soles of his cheap loafers. "That was quite good," he says. "Yeah. I think the practise is paying off. That was exactly the way it was meant to sound."

"And obviously you don't need to practise as much," Alex exhales. He feels very centered and relaxed compared to Damon, who explodes with nervous, skipping energy. "And obviously you don't think Graham does, what with you're making him late every day."

"I don't control Graham," Damon laughs, tossing his hair. "If he wants to get to practise on time, there's nothing stopping him."

"Well, what's stopping you?"

Damon glances at Alex and laughs again, uneasily this time. "I won't be late again, okay?"

"No? Dez, are you going to tell me what's going on?" Alex keeps his voice low and neutral, disguised by smoke.

"I'm not sure I know what you're talking about," says Damon, plucking the cigarette from Alex's hand and taking a deep drag. He rolls the smoke around his mouth for a few seconds, lines of concern springing out on his forehead as he realises that he's taken far too massive a hit.

"You and Graham," says Alex. "What's going on." When Damon says nothing, struggling to hold his smoke, Alex presses on. "Dave thinks you two are having it off."

Damon loses his struggle with the smoke gracefully, not choking or dying. He grins lazily, pleased with himself.. "Well, he's right," he says with the utmost stone-casual smugness. "Keep it to yourself, got it?"

"Oh my _God_!" Alex stops in his tracks and gapes at Damon. "I was hoping he was kidding. What, did you tell him? Why him and not me? How many times have you done it?" Alex just stares at Damon, wondering how he can be so relaxed about all this. "How long has this been going on?"

"Not long," Damon shrugs. "A few days. 'S nuffing. And, no, I didn't tell Dave." A funny look comes over Damon's face.

"Nothing, eh? I bet you haven't been to work at all this week. I know Graham hasn't been at the library because I've been there. And you can't even get to practise on time. My God. You're insane." He bit his tongue before he could blurt, _Does your mother know?_

"I didn't know we needed to have your approval," Damon says with a thin smile. "What's your problem, Alex? What's insane about it? The only thing you need to worry about is how we sound. And tonight proved that we sound great. It's none of your business."

"I just - “ Alex presses his fingers to his temples. "You've introduced a really weird dynamic into this band. And believe me, you _don't_ want to be in a band with your girlfriend when you have a falling-out, especially not if your girlfriend is Graham." He breaks out into involuntary giggles at the notion. "I mean, which one of you is the bottom? I'll be terribly disappointed if it's Graham. _Please_ say it's you." Alex turns his most mischievous grin at him.

Damon isn't amused by it at all, unfortunately. His face hasn't changed - it's dead serious, his eyes calculating, investigating. "You completely misunderstand the situation," Damon says. He looks away toward the warm, welcoming light of the pub. "I need a drink."

"That's two of us - I hope Graham hasn't drunk our rounds."

While Alex is in the toilet, Damon leans over to Graham and whispers into the ear that doesn't have the ice pack on it, "They know."

Graham squints at Damon. "Who knows?"

"Dave and Alex," Damon confesses.

Graham sets his ice pack down onto the bar and lifts his pint. "Who fuckin’ cares," he mumbles. Before he can say anything else, or Damon can protest, Alex is back, leaning his elbow onto the bar in between them. "What are we talking about, ladies?" he asks, glancing back and forth between the two.

Damon squirms, but Graham just blinks at him drunkenly. "We're talking about how much of a wanker you are," Graham says.

"That's funny coming from you, _Leslie_ ," Alex purrs, adding a hint of queeny lisp.

Graham slams the ice pack into Alex's face, shoving him off his stool, and follows him onto the floor. Damon springs free just in time, but he still catches a scratch off Alex's flailing fingernails. Alex is still able to defend himself, though, thanks to the debilitating bump on the skull Graham had gotten earlier, and he manages to claw Graham off him long enough for Graham to be apprehended by other pub patrons. Alex wipes blood off his upper lip with the back of hand, and offers the hand to the struggling Graham. "Sorry, sorry," Alex mumbles, "look, I really don't care what you do.”

"That's generous," Graham spits, but he accepts the hand. "Where is - " He looks around the pub, trying to squint through the clumps of people heading out the door as the pub is closing. "Where did he go?"

"I've really no idea..." says Alex apologetically.

Graham is gone like a shot through the departing backs. Alex turns back to the bar with a shrug, lifting the end of his pint, then realises that they have also left him with the responsibility of getting all the gear back to the practise space. By himself. "I'd better find Dave," he sighs, tipping the glass all the way up. _They're insane, that's all there is to it. But they'd better not start having schoolgirl slappy fights or else I'm going to have to leave._

***

Graham, after hastily seeing to his guitar, and carrying it the whole quarter-mile uphill to his house, feeling like death the whole time, pounds on the gate of Damon's flat until one of his flatmates opens the window and leans out. "What the fuck is it, Coxon!"

"Is-is Damon in?"

The flatmate ducks back in, then returns with a grumbled "all right" and disappears. From inside the house Graham can hear the flatmate yelling at Damon, and Damon shouting back "If you weren't such pricks, he'd have a key already!" In a minute, Damon unlocks the gate and lets Graham in.

Graham waits until they're safely sequestered in Damon's room, then he grabs Damon and clasps him close, holding him desperately, convinced he won't be welcome, that this is his last chance. To his surprise, Damon kisses his cheeks and clutches him almost as hard.

Neither of them say anything, and gradually the kisses move to lips. At last Damon breaks away and rests his forehead against Graham's. "What to do," Damon muses breathlessly.

"Alex and I made it up," Graham semi-lies. "I think he's sorry."

"He's not," Damon shakes his head. "He's right."

"What?"

"It is a weird dynamic... there's a lot of repressed... I dunno. Repressed something coming out."

"Look, I don't care who knows -"

"Oh, but you do. Otherwise you wouldn't have tried to break Alex's face with an icepack."

"No, I tried to break his face because he deserved it for being such a sexist, homophobic piece of shit."

Damon kisses Graham's lips again. "I feel like we're living in the Morrissey universe," he says.

"God, I hope not," Graham retorts, secretly delighted.

"Should we give it up?" Even as he says it, he grimaces. Worse than cigarettes or tea or drugs, he's gotten addicted to this, to Graham's body, to intimacy with him, to having sex three times a day. He logically knows that such things have a limited lifespan - but another part of him wants to see it through, part of him isn't so willing yet to stop.

Graham's resistance is sorely tested by the warm soft pressure of Damon's hand on his lower back, making all his nerve endings jump and tingle, even through the weight of an impending hangover. "I don't... think so," Graham whispers. Damon's hand slides down the last few inches to his behind, and gives the right buttock a firm squeeze. "Not... right now."

"I agree," Damon replies, his slate-green eyes glimmering from under lowered lashes. 


	5. (5)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Graham and Damon carry on... carrying on, Alex is half out of his mind, and Dave just really wants to be in a band - but with sane people, and suddenly there aren't any about.

“…But I think I should ... send you home." Damon struggles with the phrase, his hand still gently kneading Graham's behind. He tries to take his hand away, to emphasise what he'd said, but it won't go. And his cheek presses against Graham's, and none of it is happening the way Damon pictures it.

He combines stepping back and shoving Graham away, throwing his hand across his eyes so that he won't have to see what happens next. Graham stumbles on the edge of Damon's bed, and unprotestingly, lets himself fall down onto it. Graham lies there chuckling for a few moments. Damon faces away from him, staring out the little window with the bars over it, completely still. "You don't really want me to go home," Graham says with satisfaction. Damon's shoulders slump. "You want me to stay here so I can make it with you, don't you?"

Damon sighs. "Of course I do," Damon says.

Graham is already up on his feet with his arms out to grab Damon by the time Damon turns round to say, "That doesn't mean that I don't think that you should leave." His last word is muffled by a big kiss, but Graham does pull away after a second. He blinks at Damon from behind his finger-print-smudged lenses, clearly not seeing straight. Damon's face goes very melancholy and he toys with a little cowlick at the top of Graham's head. "You need to get some... rest. Or maybe I do; maybe you're fine."

Graham is exhausted, hardly able to keep his eyes open; he wonders why Damon can't tell this. He feels the two of them swaying together. "No, I do need sleep," Graham admits. "But I don't want to leave. I don't want to sleep alone; I want to sleep with you." He hasn't slept alone for days, and the idea of doing so terrifies him. He kisses the corner of Damon's lips and closes his eyes, his voice coming out in a prayerful whisper. "Don't make me give it up yet. If we think of the end, we'll see only the end, and there won't be any nice middle bit... 'cos we'll already be planning for the ending..."

"Yes, Graham, you can sleep here."

They settle on the mattress on the floor, side by side, holding hands under the covers. Both of them stare at the ceiling for a long time, saying nothing. At last Graham sighs impatiently, and rolls over, throwing his loose arm across Damon's neck. Damon immediately assumes the same comfortable sleeping position he's had for the last few nights, slightly turned away, with his cheek being warmed and dampened by a steady flow of Graham's breath, hand turned back over his shoulder and clasping one of Graham's. In less than a minute, they are asleep.

In the morning, they are up to old tricks. Graham wakes up first, very early, to throw up, and while he's in the toilet, decides to brush his teeth while he's at it. He is forced to repeat this cycle a few more times before he can struggle back to bed and collapse, chilled and shaken, next to Damon. When Damon stirs, Graham is still slightly conscious, and kisses Damon on the mouth. Damon kisses back, but Graham shoves him away. "For God's sake, go clean your teeth," Graham snaps. "You taste like you've been scrubbing toilets with your tongue." Damon, practically sleepwalking, gets up to obey.

Graham falls asleep before Damon returns, much more awake, and with an erection poking out of the waistband of his unbuttoned jeans. "Y'know, it's weird," he muses aloud, startling Graham awake. As soon as Damon knows that Graham is looking, he wrinkles his brow and pushes the jeans off his angular hips. "Y'know, I wake up with this, so I decide to wank it away. And it just won't go away. Isn't that odd?"

"Terribly," says Graham with a little smile, propping up on one elbow.

Damon kneels down on the bed and begins to trace the head of his cock over Graham's torso. Graham had thought that he was too hung over to feel horny, but now knows that he doesn't know himself nearly as well as he thought he did. "Are you ever going to let me fuck you?" Damon wonders.

"You already fuck me."

"No, you know what I mean. _My_ prick," and he pauses slightly for effect, "in _your_ arse."

Graham smiles guilelessly, and shakes his head. "No," he says, craning his neck to give the cockhead a kiss as it rubs across his collarbone and circles away. "You can fuck anybody else's arse that you want. Just not mine."

Damon squints and blinks. "I don't understand it. It's so good. You've never even tried it. How do you know it's not the answer to life, the universe, and everything? And you know I wouldn't hurt you too much. After the first minute or so, it hardly hurts at all."

"Leave it out, Damon. _I_ fuck _you_ \- dem's da rules." He sits up and bowls Damon over, pinning Damon's wrists to the bed.

Damon laughs and struggles. "Oh _rules_ is it? You know how much I love rules! How very Eton of you! Next you'll be demanding that you get to gag me with a school tie and hum 'Jerusalem' before you brutalise me with a meter stick."

Graham crushes his mouth into Damon's. "Shut it," he says, and kisses again, letting go of Damon's hands. He takes his own cock in one hand, and Damon's in the other, and rubs them together. He finds this curiously soothing, and drifts away on it for a moment.

Damon isn't as impressed with this as Graham is, and grabs Graham's penis himself. "And why won't you let me come in your mouth?" Damon presses on, his voice a lazy, thick morning purr. "Does it make you feel too girlish? Isn't eating spunk a woman's job?"

"You'd know," says Graham, rising on his hands and knees, dangling his cock right in front of Damon's face. Damon glares at him, but takes the bait, his immense, flexible tongue snaking out and taking an alarmingly firm hold on Graham. Graham can't resist fucking through the loop formed by Damon's tongue a few times. Damon pulls his tongue back in and flexes his cramped jaw to relax it, but he's smiling, wiping the trails of saliva from his chin. Graham feeds his cock back into Damon's mouth the millisecond he seems ready again. "You're one of those poor sods who grew up thinking that swallowing means love," Graham says, his eyes sparkling viciously. "And even I have to admit that _watching_ you go down on me is really half the fun of it. And if that... sticky, puerile porno ritual gives you some kind of satisfaction -"

Glancing up through long, starry eyelashes. "I love it when you say things like 'puerile porno ritual'."

"Did I say you could talk? Put that glorious mouth to some better use. Ah, that glorious mouth. That fucking gorgeous mouth. Ah. I should... I should paint your face. I should write my - fucking _name_ on your face." Graham has to hold onto the back of Damon's skull to aim well enough to even reach Damon's face, let alone anything more creative. Graham rocks back onto his heels, still stroking himself and moaning, his head pounding viciously, and Damon ruefully smiles and wipes off his cheeks with last night's sweaty T-shirt. Hangovers return in a brutal rush.

Graham tenderly kisses Damon's lips. "I love you," he says.

Damon frowns. "Don't be stupid," he replies.

"What's stupid about it?"

"I already _know_. That. And you don't have to tell me. It's better if you don't tell me." Damon hangs his head as much as possible, seeing as he's lying on his back in bed.

"Is that why you won't tell me?" Graham asks in a small voice.

Damon wishes to God that this wasn't happening when he's so hung over. "Maybe I don't love you," Damon says bitterly. Then he laughs, seeing Graham's blank expression. "Or maybe I don't love you in the kind of way that I need to tell you. Does that make sense? Do you need that? 'Cos I can't give it to you." He closes his eyes and tries to fall back to sleep immediately.

Unfortunately, he's still got a massive erection, and he wants to both cry and sing when he feels Graham's hand upon it.

"But you swallow," Graham whispers.

***

"They're late again," Alex fumes.

Dave has been trying to teach himself to blow smoke rings, but when Alex says the word "late" he switches to making a paper airplane out of the newspaper their chips had come in. He frowns at his greasy, ink-stained fingers, but manages to determine a fairly precise 15º angle fold on the wing which means he can add extra weight to the nose to trim some of the lift.

"DAVID! DID YOU HEAR ME! I SAID -"

"I _heard_ you, Alex, and if I have to hear you anymore, I'm going to smash your face in," Dave replies. He bends his head and returns to the paper airplane. When it's folded to perfection, Dave tosses it at Alex. It shoots at him with alarming speed, and Alex barely dodges it in time, wild-eyed and panicky.

"You just tried to kill me!" Alex yelps.

"If I meant to kill you, Alex, don't you think I could?" Dave is suddenly standing right up close next to him, wearing an innocent smile and clear eyes. He looks like a fucking psychopath. "Do you think that if I meant to kill you, you'd still be standing right now?"

Alex wisely stands down, lowering his head and fumbling for a cigarette. He hands one to Dave too. "I can't believe they'd be late again, after -"

Dave lights for them both, and goes back over to his drum kit and sits down. "It's only been half an hour," he says, shrugging a little. "Even I've been half an hour late."

"You had an excuse - you'd been arrested. Of course, they could always have been arrested, I suppose. But for what? Not a protest - oh, lifting, definitely, had to be. Or maybe public indecency."

Dave shakes his head, and lets loose one perfect smoke ring without even seeing that he's done it. "You're daft. We ought to be playing. We might as well make them feel really guilty. At least give fucking Mad Composer Damon a little something to chew on. If I hear him accidentally calling this 'his band' one more time I'll have to physically damage him."

Alex watches the unloved smoke ring dissipate in a twirl of Dave's drumstick, and sighs. The image of Damon Albarn being physically damaged really appeals to him. "Besides, it's my band."

"Ha ha, you're better than television, ain't ya? Two, three, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-."

They're jamming loosely, lodged in the key of Happy Mondays, as Damon comes in, even more tightly wound than usual. His white T-shirt seems violently bright and neat; it even appears to have been ironed. His face and ears have been scrubbed and buffed to a shiny pink sheen. His sky-blue eyes appear even huger and more sky-like than usual. And yet he didn't manage to comb his hair, and he trips over a stray power cable. "You look like Disney on acid, Damon," Dave shouts over the noise of his pounding drums, without missing a beat or a cymbal crash.

Damon grimaces in reply, paying more attention to his notebook, which is spilling loose scraps of paper all over the floor. Alex stops playing. "Where's Graham, if I may ask?" he says, raising his voice to compete with Dave's relentless drumming. In fact, it sounds like Dave is playing louder. He takes his bass off over his head and sets it onto a nearby rack.

"Don't start with me, Alex," Damon grumbles.

"I wouldn't _dream_ of starting it with you, Damon."

"No, I'm serious, leave it, OK?" Damon finally retrieves his loose notebook fragments - napkins, bits of newspapers, stray photographs - tucking their edges back into the body of the book. "I don't know where Graham is, actually." Damon's smile is full of jagged, sharp teeth. _Disney on crack, more like,_ Alex thinks. _Or maybe that can of Coca-Cola from the Young Ones, the one that turns everyone who drinks it into a homicidal maniac. Perhaps all the Coke in the world has been compromised._ "Didn't you see him at school? I assume you might have seen him there, since that’s where you're supposed to be, right, Alex?"

Alex relaxes and smiles. If Damon's bringing up college, it's a sign that he's too flustered to think straight, and that he'll dig himself a nice, deep, guilt-lined hole and let Alex push him into it. "Ah, no, I didn't bother to go today, actually," Alex says. "I can't half be bothered these days to deal with my courses - I'm really just way too involved with the band. It's very important to me. More than - well, basically anything else. Especially my personal life."

Damon seems to grimace in actual pain. "I _told_ you I don't know where he is."

"Well, when was the last time you saw him? Eh? Tell us, Damon. We're all paying for the rent on this practise space - we're wasting money every time you're late."

"You bastard, you wasted money! You did! For months!"

"That's not what I'm talking about. When was the last time and place that you saw him?"

"Fuck off. Just fuck off. Just don't ever speak to me again."

"You two aren't having a _lover's tiff_ or anything, are you?"

Dave has become so successful at tuning them out that he's startled when Alex comes crashing into the drumkit. "Hey!" Dave cries, but Alex has already recovered, and rushes for Damon's midsection, where his high centre of gravity makes him vulnerable to being knocked over. "Cut it out! Please!" Dave yells again. He wishes he could just shoot them both with tranquiliser darts, rather than having to get into the middle to break it up. If it were anywhere but the practise space, he'd just let them fight it out, but this room contains more or less the complete net worth of all four of them - every penny any of them gets is spent either on getting trashed, or buying more gear. He can't allow anything to get damaged, whether it technically belongs to him or not.

Graham runs in at more or less the same time, and between surprise and subterfuge, the brawl is broken up within seconds. Both Damon and Alex are bleeding and stunned. Immediately, Damon is concerned with Alex's hands. "Are you hurt? Can you still play?" he demands.

Alex shoves Damon's chest. "I ought to smash them with a hammer, just to spite you," Alex snaps.

In unison, Dave and Graham blurt out, "No!" Then they look at each other, and glare at Alex.

Damon struggles to control himself, his eyelids fluttering and his hand spasming in mid-air. "You started this, mate," he says.

"No, I do believe you did," Alex replies calmly.

"No," Graham puts in, straightening his glasses, "I do believe _I_ did."

"Aw, fucking hell," Dave groans, throwing his hands into the air. "I am not hearing this. I am not here. I am in the pub. Goodbye." He grabs his sticks, stuffs them back into his shoulder bag, waves, and is gone. From down the hall, his voice comes faintly through the open door: "Fucking drama queens."

"Look, Alex, we're talking about a need-to-know basis, all right?" Graham stares at the ground. "This doesn't have to be a big deal."

"Oh, I think it is, though," Alex says, his right eye beginning to swell and bruise. "I'm not fucking kidding, this band is really important to me, and - I just don’t like entertaining the idea that anything's going to jeopardise that. If this wasn't a big deal, you would have stopped after the first time. Maybe even the second time, if it was that gloriously wonderful. But what's it been now, a fortnight?"

"Don't exaggerate; it's been eight days," Damon says. His immaculate white T-shirt's now all dirty, slightly ripped, and freckled with blood.

Alex stands there stunned, nodding, processing this information. "Eight days," he repeats. Then he shudders. "Eurgh. It's like finding out your parents have sex. With _each other_. What even made you think that was a good idea? I had no idea that either one of you was - But... I hope you know that my problem's got nothing to do with your gender. I just don't think it's a good idea for people who are in bands to sleep together."

"And yet it happens," Damon says ruefully.

"X," says Graham. When Alex and Damon look at him quizzically, he supplements, "Sonic Youth."

"Eurgh," Alex says again. "Sonny and fuckin Cher, just on heroin and can't carry a fuckin tune. No. Uh - I don't know if you've looked at yourselves recently. Just look into a mirror and see how you appear to the outside world. In my opinion, you're making a huge mistake. Don't ruin everything for the rest of us." Alex shrugs, puts his guitar back into the case, and leaves.

Graham and Damon stand there in the studio together, not moving or speaking or touching their instruments, for a long time; maybe five minutes, three hundred seconds falling into soundproofed silence like lead cannonballs. At last, Graham picks his high E string, and bends it with his pinky finger. Damon looks round, startled. Graham plucks another note, nods at Damon. "Sing," he says. "Let's not waste money."

"Not today," Damon mumbles in response, then, clearing his throat and speaking more clearly, "there's some thinking that needs to be done. Go home and practise by yourself, if you want to practise." Then, at Graham's stricken expression, "Or stay here, I don't care. I'm off anyway."

Damon leaves without another word or look, and once on the sunny street, glances up and down the road. He wonders if he shouldn't just go wandering, but then he remembers that Dave went down the pub, and that he might try to go back to the studio after a few pints. And Damon rather medicinally needs a pint himself.

Damon locates Dave leaning up against the wall, waiting for his turn at darts. Damon slinks up to Dave and stands there silently, waiting to be acknowledged. Dave throws his hand and has marked his score and gotten another pint before he notices his band's lead singer, slouching by the jukebox, squeezing his eyes shut really hard as if trying to bring Dave over with the power of his mind. Dave stands there in front of him for at least a minute, smiling, waiting for Damon to open his eyes; when Damon doesn't, Dave steps on his foot. Damon jumps ten feet, howling and cursing. "The fuck!" he yells. "Oh, hi, Dave."

"You're a tosser; it wasn't even that hard," says Dave with a sunny grin. "These are my steel-toed boots, too - consider yourself lucky that I'm not feeling more aggressive today."

They move to a high standing table, sort of a broad horizontal plank of wood with nothing to sit on anywhere near it, so high off the ground that only quite tall people find it at all practical. The band has adopted it as their favourite, and if all four of them are present at the same time, there's no room to fit anyone else. Damon gets a pint of heavy cider to match Dave's beer, and leans against the table as if desperate for its support.

"Drink it before it evolves," Dave advises. "Chelsea match on."

"Oh aye?" Damon chirps, suddenly energetic again. Dave mentally shakes hands with himself - _He's a simple lad, really. It's not too hard to play the puppeteer with him. Give him music, drugs, and football, and he's content._

The match distracts conversation entirely for an hour, but during the melancholy recovery period after Chelsea's defeat, Damon begins squirming and hugging himself and acting all weird again, and Dave knows that he can't really get out of this much longer. "Sorry about everything," Damon sighs.

"No point in any of that," says Dave, a little embarrassed. "You ought to apologise to Alex. He's going to have that black eye for weeks, and he's trying to ask out that one girl he's been fancying for a while. You only got me a little whack, hardly hurt a bit."

Damon shakes his head, and Dave turns back to his beer, resigned to hear Damon talking to him like he's stupid. "No, Dave, that's not what I mean. I mean about the group."

"No -" Dave glances around him, feeling a little reckless, and wondering how far Damon has actually gone off the deep end. "What's he like?"

"What? You mean Graham?"

Dave widens his eyes and gives Damon his psycho-happy grin. "No, the Duke of Edinburgh."

Damon blinks away the sarcasm, becoming pensive, all but making Dave ill with his sweet cute pretty bullshit. "Why, do you fancy him?"

"No, but obviously, you do." Dave takes a swallow as Damon tilts his head slightly and gets, if imaginable, even more Disney. "Damon, I mean, what do you see in him? Is it all _emotional_?" Dave grimaces out the bitter-sour last word.

"Yeah, it's emotional," says Damon firmly. "Not in the way that you might be thinking. I mean, I've fancied him for a while, since we met, really. Schoolyard flirting. If we'd been about one year younger I probably would have beat him up instead." He sighs into his pint glass. "I decided to just forget about it - besides, I wanted to have girls. I did forget about it, more or less. He came to me."

Dave can't really resist making a face of disgust. Luckily Damon doesn't see it. "But why do you continue, because it sounds like it's just an experiment?" Dave asks. "You two are running yourselves ragged. You've never been flaky one day that I've known you till now, and now you can barely keep your head straight. And Damon -" Dave holds up his hand and spends a moment preparing himself. "Look, mate, we need to get a tour booked soon. We need to be able to commit to a couple of weeks on the road, playing every single night, and playing our fucking guts out. And um... I hate to tell you this, but either you and Graham quit shagging, or you'll have to find a new drummer, too."

Damon knocks over his glass, spilling the last quarter-inch of lukewarm yellow cider across the plank, soaking Dave's elbow. "What? Are you serious?"

Dave shrugs. "I'm sorry, it's just not working. I mean, let's stay mates, let's jam together once in a while, but I cannot handle being in a band where people are getting it on. I most certainly cannot handle being in a band where you and Graham are getting it on - you're both fucking barmy at the best of times, and it's obvious that you're losing it. Both of you - you're losing it. You're not benefitting from it - I say shake hands and walk away from it. You did it once before; you can decide to forget it again. And I will NOT go on tour with the two of you when your minds are always on something else besides the music."

"That's a totally, totally unfair -"

"It's not unfair. You told me that this band was a democracy; that's part of the reason why I'm here. And that means that you have to respect my ideas, my wishes - or I fuckin walk. That's all there is to it. I've signed no contracts. I don't have to stick around."

Damon turns on the full blast of Disney, and Dave has to look away or risk losing his resolve - Damon has gotten Dave to back down just by making his eyes particularly huge and shiny with unshed tears, for Dave, too, is a complete softie. "You don't believe in the band enough to stay?"

"I believe in the band enough to tell you to give up your lover because it's bringing the band down," says Dave.

Damon, to Dave's surprise, doesn't say anything else. He nods, looking down at the floor, not swinging around or rolling his eyes or any of the things he usually does when he's trying to avoid thinking about something. Dave resists the urge to touch Damon to cement their bond, because either it's going deeper and getting stronger as they sit there together in silence, or it isn't. Dave squeezes the cider out of the elbow of his shirt. "I'm sorry," he says. "But you know I'm right."

"Yeah, I do," says Damon, with a heavy sigh.


	6. (6)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things go pear-shaped between Graham and Damon (the angst can be seen from space), but as always, the band, the incredible music arising from inspiration, comes first. And when the group has a gig in Brighton, the inevitable result is romance, destruction, magic, drugs, and Quadrophenia fandom - the simple and complicated truth of the matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains lyrics slightly altered from their final, recorded form, as an attempt to show how songs evolve and change over time - trust me, I know the actual words. :)

_I don't want to hurt you  
no not ever_

Damon and Graham sleep apart.

Damon goes home, drunk, with a bad headache. He swallows a couple of paracetemols out of the communal kitchen bottle and hangs back in the kitchen doorway, squinting at the mostly-static TV set and his housemates mostly passed out on the floor, some of them still awake but fried to the gills on hashish. His vision begins to swim, and he realises he should have checked the pills themselves before he swallowed them. He barely makes it into his room before he falls, facedown and drooling, onto his mattress. He retains just enough consciousness for ten minutes to squeeze his eyes shut, and shudder as he catches the lingering scent of Graham on his blankets. He manages to drag his arm down next to his mouth and bite into it, as hard as he can... and then he slurps it, licks it, kisses it. He's almost so out of it that he can pretend it's Graham's arm, or Graham's shoulder, or Graham's thigh just above the knee where he's most sensitive and it's a pure erogenous zone that goes right to his prick, makes him giggle and moan... But he's not out of it enough.

Graham plays alone in the studio for a long time - until his tough fingertips are a mass of bruises and cuts - then goes home, steals a full new bottle of vodka from one of his flatmate's pantry, and goes up to his room. He tries to play some more, but eventually gives up and practises chugging the warm vodka straight out of the bottle. He's determined to get through it; he has to stop twice to puke, but he finishes. He lies in bed with the room whirling and pitching around him, trying to block out the kaleidoscope of images of fucking Damon. Tonguing Damon. Kissing Damon. Listening to Damon pleading with him - _harder. mercy_. Or _more please_. Or _can I...?_

The kaleidoscope implodes with a thump.

***

Graham sleeps too late to make it to class, but not too late for band practise. He makes a hasty call to his life-drawing instructor, who informs him cheerfully that Graham's already failed the course, and that he should really concentrate on his pop group. Graham would like to take a shower, but there isn't time. He grabs his guitar from where it lies beside him, immediately sets it back down again, and runs to the toilet to be sick.

After repeating these actions about seven times, Graham feels able to deal with going out into the world. He is grateful that the day is overcast; as it is, the muted light is almost too much for his drink-ravaged eyes, and he closes them as he begins the stagger down the hill towards the practise space. He hears a faint yelling of his name coming from somewhere out there, and he opens his eyes to see Damon jogging down towards him, his dirty-gold hair bouncing.

Damon is the person that Graham wants to see least in the world, and so Graham closes his eyes again. "All right, Damon?" he grumbles.

"Yeah," Damon replies. He walks in silence for a moment beside the staggering Graham. "Hard night?" Damon asks, clearing his throat.

"Hard," replies Graham. "Drinking."

"Yeah, me too."

More silence, more staggering. Damon clears his throat again. "Look, Gray, there's something I need to talk to you about."

Graham squints his eyes shut even harder, and then trips over a bit of broken concrete. He catches himself on some chain-link fence, and turns to face Damon with a snarl. "Save it, would you?" he lashes out. "I already know what you're going to say."

Damon blinks innocently. A stray beam of sunlight teases itself through the cloud cover, alighting directly on Damon's face and illuminating him. Graham wants Damon's head to explode, spectacularly, right there on the street, spontaneous human combustion, starting with those dazzling eyes. "Do you? You know what I'm going to say?" comes Damon's voice, bristly and tough coming out of that angelic face.

"Yeah. And how 'bout I save you the bother, and raise you a fiver. I don't want you."

Damon, for a second, all shining in the sunlight, looks completely blank and stricken, and Graham feels a sick, terrible, mean satisfaction in the pit of his chest. "Oh. Right." The sunlight moves away, and there's just Damon, smirking in that way Graham's only seen Damon use on schoolyard bullies. Damon's opponents tend to walk away licking terrible psychic wounds. Graham almost repents his venom, but his natural stubbornness flares up again. _Go out like a man - if he gets too personal, go for his nose, it's sensitive. But how much more personal can he possibly get than dumping me?_

_...Oh, no._

Damon unleashes a tight stream of sarcasm - remarkably restrained for him. "You're right. I was going to say you don't want me. That's completely and utterly plausible. I was going to make this gentle and reasonable, but I can see that you're going to be shitty about it, aren't you?"

Graham rubs his throbbing, pounding forehead with one hand. _No, it's Damon's head that I want to explode, not mine... Go for broke, Coxon. You've nothing left. It's over, and you know it._ He clutches the chainlink and spits at the ground, "I - I don't want you ever touching me again or - or looking at me in that way again. Got it? It's my band too and you can't tell me what to do." Graham straightens up, then has to shove his guitar into Damon's arms, and pukes through the chainlink. It's almost as spectacular as an exploding head, but it isn't as fun to have caused. "Fuck. I'm fuckin' ill, mate. I'm going home and I'm going back to bed." Damon stands there holding the guitar case, his mouth hanging open and his face as white as a sheet. Graham snatches his guitar away from Damon and starts back the way he came, groaning audibly as his wobbly legs attempt the steep uphill climb.

Badly shaken, Damon continues to the studio. Only Dave is there, stretching his long arms above his head, over his shoulders. "You look like a trainwreck," he says to Damon. "I thought I was bad off."

"Took the wrong pills last night," Damon sighs, picking up a set of wind chimes Graham had brought in one day, and they'd never used. He toys with the little metal tubes wistfully.

"Did you talk with Graham?" asks Dave.

Damon gives Dave a vicious glare, and responds coldly, "You'll be very pleased to know that it's done."

Dave raises his eyebrows. "Pleased? It's not my intention to be pleased. If you were doing this to please me, you need your head examined."

"You'd better be fucking happy, because we're not!" Damon yells.

"I don't really give a fuck if you're happy or not," says Dave.

Damon runs to a far corner of the studio and sits curled up on the floor, arms around himself, hugging and rocking back and forth on his hipbones. Dave is appalled, first out of embarrassment that Damon would act so childish, then confusion and horror, and finally a horrid pitiful sympathy, when Damon doesn't stop. It just goes on and on without slowing or changing or stopping. He's seen Damon sling some drama over the last two years of knowing him, but this - this fetal position thing, rocking himself like an abused child - it makes Dave want to apologise for hours. But he can't; he can't think of anything to say to make it all better, no matter how much he wants to. _It's not my fault he's like this,_ Dave reminds himself. _If I could have spared him this, I would have... was I this emotionally unstable when I was twenty-two?_ Dave watches Damon for a minute or so, Damon shaking himself as regularly as a metronome, and just out of instinct, he begins to softly play drums in rhythm with Damon's rocking. Nothing much; just a touch of the brush on the cymbal and a tap on the snare, counterpointing Damon's steady beat.

It doesn't surprise Dave when Damon sings something, muffled from his closed chest. "Don't look at me as though I'm not here..."

Dave has to close his eyes to keep the rhythm, to keep himself from breaking into apologies. _I'm not sorry for what I've said. I'm not sorry. Damon, you won't make me sorry... I did what I had to do to be able to keep doing this with you... Sing. Sing._

With a comparatively loud bluster of noise and commotion, Alex enters the studio, tipsy and frisky. He's drawn in his breath to bellow a hello when he notices the scene - Damon, still rocking with his arms around his knees, one hand listlessly holding out the shimmering wind chimes, face clammy and puffy, and singing in a whisper. Without making any further noise, Alex tiptoes over to his amp, plugs in his bass, turns the volume down to 2, and begins to play whatever comes into his mind.

Damon sings some more: "Don't look at me as though I'm not here... I only regret, what you don't see... you know more than I, so think for me..." His haggard, weepy, but still determined eyes slam into Alex, and he manages to snarl a little bitterness into his thick, teary voice. "Remember you're _not_ me."

Alex thinks, _I'll kill him later - this is a hell of a good song already. But where's Graham? Did I miss something wildly significant?_

Damon's singing again, spinning out lyrics in a slightly louder, more confident voice, though still soft and miserable. "No substitute for the girl of your dreams, who never knew who you were... half your life has been explained... you want the other half now." Frowning now, Damon gradually rises to his feet, and settles at the piano, still rocking. Dave, eyes closed, has not altered his tempo in the slightest. Damon begins to play an approximation of the vague melody that Alex was picking out, but slightly altered. "Do this, Alex," says Damon.

"Is there a chorus?" asks Alex, in a quiet, careful voice.

"That is the chorus."

Alex plays. It sounds good. It hurts in his chest. "Is there Graham?"

Damon doesn't reply to that, humming now, disappearing into his piano keys. Alex sighs and plays on, knowing there'll be hell to pay if he doesn't, wondering where it's all going.

***

Band practise is tense for about a week. No one is ever late or drunk when they show up. Damon and Graham don't speak to each other, or look at each other, at all. The band plays through all of their current songs now, except the one that was written in Graham's absence. After a little quiet outside discussion, Alex and Dave decide to trap Damon into dealing with it, as they are both frustrated by not being able to work on such a lovely song. In perfect unison, they both begin to play what they remember while Graham is otherwise engaged in scribbling on sheet music and Damon looks after a setting on his keyboard that got lost when the pen mark rubbed off. Damon hears the tune and whips his head around, bright red, but doesn't say anything. Graham drops his pencil and stares at Alex and Dave, mouth open. "That's gorgeous," Graham blurts, and begins to layer quick bursts of chordage over the top.

Damon rushes forward and slaps his hand onto Graham's strings. "No! For God's sake, no! You're chopping it to bits! You just said it was gorgeous - do something swirly!"

Alex and Dave both burst out laughing, and Graham is so pleased to have the tension broken again that he laughs too, even though he's not sure why. And then Damon laughs too. "We've been saving it for you," Damon says with a wry smile. Alex and Dave trade a look - _handled very diplomatically, wasn't it?_

After that, things are the same as they had been before "...all that," as Alex calls it. Damon and Graham even go back on the pull for women, though, as before, Graham's Jekyll-and-Hyde shyness and Damon's high-strung pretentiousness causes them both to strike out much more often than not.

The tour plans are hastily revised when the band determines that it will take about ten times as much money as they've got to tour even for a fortnight. However, Damon's incessant schmoozing before their last gig had gotten them in good with a young pub owner down in Brighton, who needs a band to play the weekend of a bank holiday to officially inaugurate his pub as a place where rock bands played. After some initial scrambling to come up with a van, the loan of some equipment (well, a lot of equipment), and just barely enough money for food, petrol, and alcohol, it's finalised. At last - a gig outside of London, and two and a half days in Brighton on a summery bank holiday, at that.

Brighton Friday is a fine hot day, even at the ungodly hour of the morning when they set out. The hour is Damon's idea, one that makes him wildly unpopular in the van until everyone falls asleep again. Once they've arrived in Brighton, Damon and their Brighton contact check in with the pub to find out what time things need to occur this evening, and everyone else goes to breakfast. Damon catches up with them before their plates are even clean.

"Easy peasy," Damon says, beaming, sliding into the plastic booth beside Alex. "We soundcheck while they're closed for after-lunch, at two. We've got thirty minutes to make it sound as good as we can. We can do that, can't we lads?"

Graham nods with a mouthful of egg and toast. Graham is trying to be vegan, but some part of him demanded that he at least have eggs this morning, and six cups of coffee with milk. "And then what?"

"Then we amuse ourselves as we see fit until nine o'clock. And then we're in a pub. Until they close." Damon nods indulgently at the happy grins that return to the faces of his bandmates. "We mustn't drink our entire take, okay?"

"I might drink my share," says Alex thoughtfully. "Do you mind?"

"You're only getting an eighth share, then." Damon takes a sip out of Dave's tea. Dave handles his butter knife menacingly.

"An eighth?" Alex moans. "I squat, I don't have to pay rent. I'd rather drink it here than take it back to London and drink it there - what would be the point? I want to drink in new, exotic climes."

"Yeah," says Dave, running his finger through the spilled egg yolk, sugar, pepper, and fragments of the paper wrappings on drinking straws that litter the table.. "Exotic climes like Barbara's Caff, Brighton Pier, home of the 85p breakfast."

"Yeah," affirms Alex.

"Drinking sounds good," Graham slurs in a sleepy-kid voice.

"We can't drink, we haven't been paid yet," Damon whines.

"I've got a fiver," Dave pipes up. "Someone must have another."

Everyone looks at everyone else. Finally, with an embarrassed sniff, Alex admits, "I've got one. Emergency slush fund, you know."

"You?" Dave looks at Damon and Graham, both of whom slowly shake their heads. "Well, it's a damned shame, but a fiver's barely enough to convince me that I've perhaps tasted beer today. You're on your own." He stands up. "C'mon, Alex, there's one at the end of the road. There's darts."

Damon grabs a cold egg salad sandwich and his own cup of tea (he fumbles in his pocket to come up with enough coinage to pay for it all) and he and Graham set off on the Quadrophenia Tour Of Brighton, shuffling ten paces behind a trio of immaculately dressed and polished mods. "I feel so terribly poor sometimes," Damon says sadly, dunking his crusts into his tea.

"You are poor," Graham points out. He lights a cigarette. "Remember when I showed you this for the first time?" he says, referring to the film _Quadrophenia _, which he and Damon watched almost every single day for an entire term when they were just becoming friends.__

"Of course I do," Damon smiles. "First time I was ever stoned."

"I was terrified," Graham remembers with a laugh. "I was convinced Mum could smell hashish on your breath."

"That was glorious," Damon says. _Sprawling on Graham's bed, amazed at the weird smell of another teenage boy's bed. Wondering if he wanked as much as I did, what he thought about when he wanked. If I should tell him that, sometimes, I thought about him when I wanked, even when I really didn't want to. Didn't feel comfortable wanking to that. Couldn't stop. Wondered if anyone could tell by looking at me that I was queer. Wondered if I even_ was _queer. Felt rotten for even caring if I was._

"I don't know if we're closer to achieving that than we were before," Graham's voice cuts into Damon's thoughts.

"Achieving what?"Damon asks.

"Becoming the Who. Or at least putting out a record." They walked along the pier, under which Jimmy The Mod slept in the movie.

"I don't want to become the Who," says Damon. "Why stop there?"

Graham laughs. "Exactly. That's what I like about you. You think big. I think big, too, but you actually say it out loud and you say it with perfect conviction."

"I do have perfect conviction," says Damon convincingly, even when he winces inwardly with worry about the gig, about the money, about the studio. "We will be bigger than the Who. We just have to fucking work."

"And don't let anything get in the way?" Graham adds wryly.

Damon glances at Graham. Graham is smiling. "We're only organisms," Damon says. "We're not perfect."

"It's interesting to hear you say that," says Graham.

Damon sighs patiently. "I never once said that I was perfect, Graham."

"No, it's just cool to hear you say it."

"You're so odd."

Graham titters.

Damon throws out his arm and Graham bumps into it; Graham looks up to see Damon staring at a well-worn, peeling gate on an alleyway. "I think this is it," he whispers.

Graham looks around him, trying to spot the mods. They seem to have disappeared. "This can't be it."

"No, I'm really convinced that it is." Damon fiddles with the lock on the gate, managing to unfasten it using a paper clip he found in his pocket. Graham has only a moment to be astonished at Damon's criminal abilities before Damon yanks him inside.

They both look up at the ceiling. The inside of the anonymous gate is encrusted with grafitti spanning at least ten years, in biro, in paint marker, scratched into the wood and metal and brick itself. "Cor, you're right," Graham breathes reverently. "Jimmy and Stef had it off here - I could never find it before - I thought they tore it down after the movie was made. Damon Albarn, you're a genius."

Damon takes Graham's face between his hands and kisses him gently on the lips. "Just one," he says, dropping his hands and backing away.

Graham stares at him. "Oh, Dez," he sighs, sad and confused.

"I'm really, really sorry. You told me not to touch you. I'm sorry-" Damon blushes bright red and turns away to face the wall, hands in the pockets of his light denim jacket. "I promise, it's behind me."

"It's not, is it?" Graham says. "It's totally not."

"It's not, no," Damon contradicts himself eagerly. "I mean, I wish it were."

"No, you don't." Graham chews his lower lip and smiles. He approaches Damon and leans against his back, sliding his hands into Damon's pockets on top of Damon's hands. Their fingers lock and entwine.

"Graham-"

"What needs to happen is that we oughtn't to talk about it."

"It's going on two," Damon points out. "We needs to happen is that we ought to get to the pub."

Graham untangles himself, opens the gate, and shows Damon out of the magical alley.

***

Soundcheck goes brilliantly. The band lineup sounds great - Seymour and the Uptights. The PA system is brand new and seamless, and the band's borrowed instruments sound better than the ones they own. The Uptights have already soundchecked, and they're friendly and enthusiastic about Seymour's music. Outside, the sun is shining.

The band are finished by two-twenty, and Alex immediately begins hitting on the pub owner's wife's sister, who is more than happy for the attention, and Dave begins to engage the owner in conversation about how his business is going to be run. Damon and Graham go to the toilet together. "I've got an idea," Damon says to Graham, "let me know what you think of it."

"Go ahead," says Graham, concentrating more on pissing than anything else.

"I've got one tab of acid, and one tab of E. Want to split them?"

"You've got _no_ money, but you have two different types of psychedelic drugs."

Damon smiles impishly. "Yeah, well. Reckon?"

"Tonight?" says Graham.

"I'm thinking acid first. Like, right now. We go and bang around on the beach for a while, come back here and take the E, then play the show. It's really not very strong, and if we split them, we'll only be a little bit different, not tripping insanely or anything. But it's such a beautiful day outside - and I've got to eat this acid soon before it goes off."

"Yeah, all right," Graham agrees. "I hope you're right about it not being too strong - sometimes acid really gets the better of me."

"No, it'll be great."

After hand-washing, each nibbles a microscopic fragment of ill-tasting paper. Graham goes back to the van and changes into shorts, and Damon ditches his jacket. It's hot out. The sky is lovely and blue and already some people are showing up to begin the bank holiday in Brighton. Unfortunately, none of them yet are the cool kids from London; they're more like the square pensioners, the kind who thoroughly disapprove of the horde of young toughs that will descend on the resort town and ruin their quiet holiday.

Damon and Graham flop down in the sand. "I wish I had a can of shandy," Graham sighs.

"I wish I had case of lagers," Damon says.

"I wish I had a bottle of chilled Russian vodka."

"I wish I had time machine."

"Why? Where would you go?"

Damon doesn't answer, and Graham gives his friend a long hard look. "How many girls have you pulled this week, Dez?"

Damon blows out his breath, blinking as he tries to remember. "Er, none," he says. "Yourself?"

"Two," says Graham.

"It's your beautiful brown eyes."

"I don't feel very good about it," says Graham. "One didn't go past a thorough snog, but the other one and I actually went back to her place and did it. And right after I was done, I got up and left. I didn't even say 'thanks, I'll call.'"

Damon laughs shortly. "C'mon, Graham, even Alex has better manners than that."

"I just didn't want to see her. She was just like a piece of food I'd chewed, and taken back out of my mouth and put back onto the plate. I didn't want to look at her. I felt terrible. I'm sick of that sort of thing. I think I'm going to not do that anymore."

"You used to be such a fan of cheap, meaningless sex."

"That was before, I guess."

Damon suddenly goes pale, and blinks at Graham. "Do you feel it coming on?"

"What, the acid? No way, we took it half an hour ago."

"I feel it," Damon mutters. His breathing becomes shallow and rapid. "I'm going back to the van. I've got to sort it out. I can't be out here all of a sudden."

"You all right?" Graham asks concerned.

Damon is already halfway up the beach, and Graham has to jog to catch up with him. "Maybe you just need a chocolate or something!" Graham calls after him. He reaches the van shortly after Damon gets there, and climbs inside, slamming the door shut behind him. "Are you OK? You want a cigarette or some water?" He sits next to Damon on the back seat, peering into Damon's eyes. Besides enlarged pupils, he seems normal.

"No, I'm fine," Damon breathes. "Just too much sunlight. Too much information all at once. My brain went into overload."

Graham hands him a plastic bottle of water anyway, and Damon obligingly takes a swallow. Damon rubs the water bottle against his jeans to wipe off some of the condensation, and in the process, drips one lukewarm drop of water onto Graham's left thigh, just above the knee.

Moving as slowly as a dreamer, Damon lowers his head and licks the drop of water off.

Graham immediately has his hands on Damon's neck and head, holding him there. He hopes, he prays, he knows - and then Damon does exactly what Graham wants; he gently bites him just above the kneecap, and it's the usual glorious struggle for Graham not to bring up his leg in reflex, that he has to hold his leg down with all his will, and for some reason it makes all the blood rush to his groin. He lets out a quiet, but unmistakable gasp.

Damon continues to chew and lick, stroking with the fingers of one hand up and down the back of Graham's calf. Graham says, "You're trying to tickle me to death, aren't you?"

Damon turns his head and gazes into Graham's eyes. His pupils are now the size of pencil erasers. "Should I stop?" he asks with genuine concern.

"You should kiss me on the mouth," says Graham.

Damon sits up, rubbing his hands nervously up and down the legs of his jeans. Graham reaches out and kisses Damon first.

Fireworks, sparks, sweat, harps, celestial choir - the whole nine yards. Graham emerges from a wispy haze of happiness to find his shorts around his ankles, and Damon rubbing his cheek against Graham's penis. "I think the acid's coming on," Graham admits with a helpless giggle.

Damon sits up, wets his palm with his tongue, and begins to jerk Graham off, flicking his tongue against Graham's lips. "Faster!" Graham hisses.

"You do it," Damon says.

"Put your mouth on me."

Damon cradles the head of Graham's penis in his mouth, stroking it with his tongue, while Graham furiously jerks. Quickly his pace is too hard and fast for Damon to really keep him in his mouth, and he settles for taking a quick occasional suck or lick. "Make it tidy," Graham says, then groans musically as he comes into Damon's open mouth. Damon gives a quiet sigh of tremendous satisfaction as he sucks the trembling Graham clean, licks his teeth, smacks his lips.

Graham stares at Damon as he sits up again, the pupils now vast and fragile in his eyes, the squeezed blue irises straining to keep Damon from imploding completely. Graham pulls his shorts up, shuddering as it clears his sensitised groin. Damon takes Graham's hand and pushes it against the erection in his jeans, then puts both arms round Graham and begins to rock him back and forth, crushing kisses against Graham's hair. "My dear and special friend," Damon sings into Graham's ear, his voice like washes of moonlight on glass. "There's never a point at which we end, oh no."

"You call me odd," Graham whispers, massaging Damon's hard-on. "You call _me_ odd."


	7. (7)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Brighton gig's brilliant, and everything gets better and better, and Damon and Graham pull a girl and go back to hers, and...Well, you can imagine. But you don't have to imagine it, because here it is. Do I have to warn for complete and total filth and literally dangerous decadence?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for very explicit M/M/F sex and a lack of respect for boundaries, edging close to non-consent.

The My Bloody Valentine tape, on the van's stereo, clicks and starts over again from the beginning. In the back of the van, the two boys, frying on acid, lean against each other and fumble gently under the denim jacket thrown across their laps.

"Kiss me again."

"I'm so sorry - those things I said - I was so hungover and I just felt like death -"

"It's forgiven. I know you didn't mean it."

"I thought you were going to tell me to take a hike and I couldn't bear that -"

"No! You - thickie! I was actually going to tell you that we needed to try to take it easy for a while because it was making Dave and Alex so tense... I was going to ask you if we could find a way to... oh, God, oh, right there."

"You are _not_ allowed to stop loving me."

"I could never stop loving you, Graham. No matter what. I'll always love you."

"And you can't come. You'll make a mess. And I am not going to 'tidy up' for you."

"You little... ahhh. I'll get you back. I swear I'll get you back."

"Say it again. You know you want to say it. You feel it? You feel it?"

"I love you, I love you, I love you..." Breathed into Graham's open mouth, sighed down his throat, Damon's body shuddering against him, Damon defying his command and spurting thick, viscous semen, like he's been pent up for weeks, into Graham's hand.

+++

The men's toilet furthest back from the door has been commandeered as the band's impromptu backstage. After several minutes of loud, beery commotion and bluster, Damon manages to chase everyone except his bandmates out of the tiny room and locks it behind him. Almost immediately come knocks and cries from blokes who've just realised they've had six pints since arriving. Damon leans forward, as if propping the door against the invading Viking horde, then puts out his arms and gathers them all close round him in a tight huddle. His eyes literally sparkle, his irises thin turquoise rings surrounding distended black pupils. He looks mad; he looks beautiful; he looks supernatural. "We're going to do it right tonight," he whispers; even through the noise of the pub outside, they can all hear him perfectly. "I know we've got it in us. We've got to get it out _there_." He glances vaguely at the door behind him, and turns back to them with a deeply thoughful, whimsical, curious-elf look on his face.

He reaches across and takes one of Dave's hands. Dave thinks he feels some kind of freaky energy crackling on the surface of Damon's skin. Damon grasps the back of Dave's head and brings their foreheads together; when both hands are clasped, there's a definite feedback loop passing through them, linking them head to head and hand to hand, a perfect psychic energy exchange. And Dave doesn't believe in any of that stuff at all, except when he feels it, he knows it's real. Damon whispers urgently, "I need to know that you're with me, David."

The words fly from Dave's mouth without hesitation. "I'm with you, Damon."

Damon then kisses Dave on the corner of his mouth, and hugs him tight. He lets Dave go, and takes Alex's hand.

"I need to know that you're with me, Alex."

"I'm with you, Damon." Alex does believe in that stuff, and loves it. _I am home,_ he thinks.

Kiss and embrace.

"I need to know that you're with me, Graham."

"I'm with you, Damon."

Damon kisses Graham's mouth, then his sweaty forehead. He holds him for a fraction longer, eyes closed. Then he breaks away, gracefully unfolds his long monkey arms from his chest like a blooming tulip, and lunges for the door.

An extraordinary performance follows, Damon's bizarre magic spell having had its intended effect. Seymour are supposed to be opening for the Uptights, but rather than drinking and yelling throughout the opening band as usual, the patrons are completely captivated by them, dancing and leaping about in apparent imitation of the hyperactive Damon, Graham, and Alex. All the songs are perfect, even the ones they ruin. Dave would swear he sees Damon leap four feet straight in the air and levitate. In a rare quiet moment between songs while Graham mends a broken string, someone shouts "Get signed! Get signed!" and everyone cheers.

There's so much handshaking and back-slapping and pint-buying afterwards that Graham's half convinced they _have_ been signed. He's halfway down his second when Damon grabs him. "Don't - the E's!" he hisses in Graham's ear. "Respiratory failure is not in my plans!"

"You're no fun anymore," Graham grins, throwing an arm around his favourite person in the world. He lands a sloppy kiss on the side of Damon's face. He wants to leave this revelry and go someplace where he can fuck the living daylights out of Damon, but restrains himself to rubbing his hand across Damon's rock-hard belly and taking a deep breath of his after-show sweat funk. "You're fantastic."

Damon takes Graham's hand and squeezes it. "C'mere, I need you to meet somebody."

Standing against the wall near the men's toilet- _cum_ -Uptight's new backstage area is a fairly exciting-looking young woman wearing a light, flowery, summery dress that looks small enough to fit a five-year-old, black knee-high stockings, and lineman's boots. Her hair is an alarming shade of red that Graham's only seen before on fire engines, in a wildly unkempt sort of shaggy houseplant shape. She's got a decent body - not the sort that graces magazine covers, but the sort that's put together so well, and held so sexily, that he immediately wants to know what she looks like naked. She sees Damon and opens her arms wide. Damon throws himself into them and begins to kiss her ravenously all over her face. He actually moans "Yum, yum, yum, yum" and the girl giggles and shrieks and begins to mock-slap him away.

Graham stands nearby, his mind a confused tangle. _Too much desire in one place yet my attention is divided. Fucking liar said it wasn't strong acid, said it wasn't strong E. Fucking liar. I'm off my face and way, way too emotional._

Damon comes up for air. "This 's Emma."

"Nice to meet you," says Graham uncertainly.

Emma grins at Graham. "You were brilliant," she breathes, unfolding from Damon and folding around Graham instead. Graham, in his enhanced state, feels his heart nearly explode from excitement and happiness at being wrapped up in such a thrilling girl. She smells wonderful - jasmine, cinnamon, and arousal - and her body is terrifically soft in so many places. Graham feels like he's won the lottery. "You're the best guitarist I've ever seen in my life. I'm so thrilled to meet you."

"Yeah, all right," Graham enthuses. He laughs when she kisses him, glancing across her cheeks and her jungle of hair at Damon, who stands back with a wicked smile on his face, but Emma quickly distracts Graham from checking Damon's reaction. She flicks her tongue all the way round the inside of his mouth and imprints her breasts against his ribs, her cool hand reaching into the back of Graham's jeans. _I might like being famous,_ thinks Graham.

When Emma lets Graham go for a second, Damon infiltrates slightly, slipping his arm around Graham's waist. "We'll be staying with her tonight," Damon says into Graham's ear.

Graham looks askance at Damon. "W-we will? What about-?" He waves his hand in an approximation of the last place he saw Dave and Alex.

"It's all sorted out. We'll meet back here tomorrow at noon for some food. It's part of our take - and I don't know about you, but I'm for getting as much free food as possible."

"Right," Graham agrees in a daze. Emma's hand is still down the back of his jeans and food is the furthest thing from his mind.

"We ought to go," Emma says. "It's getting late."

The pub clock reads that it's not quite eleven yet, but Graham's not about to argue - that look on Damon's face is far too confusing, and the Ecstasy has brought out his curiosity and shattered his inhibitions about following it. He trusts Damon to look out for him in times of trouble, and he knows that Damon counts on him to do the same. And he'd like to find out if Emma's interested in anything besides his guitar playing and his undernourished behind.

"I'll get a taxi," says Emma.

While she's standing on the street trying to see one, Graham mutters at Damon, "What's the deal, Dez?"

"I met her about eight months ago when she was up visiting her sister, who used to work at the same place as I did," Damon explains. "We spent a weekend together. She had dark hair then. We took acid and listened to records and shagged like crazy. She's older than us by a bit. Not too much. She's not _thirty_ or anything. She's fit. Game as fuck."

"Is she? You never told me about her."

Damon draws circles in the palm of Graham's hand with his fingertip. "I didn't have to," Damon says. "Unlike Alex, I can actually have sex without getting a fucking billboard put up describing every detail. I called her as soon as I knew we'd be playing here, asked her if I could stay, and I asked her if you could stay too. She's quite open-minded and has no flatmates. That's one of the things I was going to tell you before you told me to keep my filthy eyes to myself," he points out.

Instead of kissing Damon silly like he wants to, Graham settles for pulling on Damon's bottom lip until it looks ridiculous. "Got money, has she?"

Damon lightly smacks Graham's hand away. "Enough, yeah."

The three of them settle into the backseat of a taxicab, Graham in the middle. Emma has her hands under Graham's shirt immediately, and begins to kiss him again, while Damon gently massages Graham's hand and watches them. Graham struggles to make conversation. "So... um... uh... uh, you have a sister?"

"I have a sister named Jean," Emma smiles patiently, stroking Graham's earlobe, "who used to work with Damon before he got sacked."

"Oh, Jean, I remember Jean. I... um... don't see the resemblance." Jean was a sporty, loud-mouthed, bottle blonde obsessed with George Michael; Damon had complained about her incessantly.

"We're quite different," Emma says. Under black-mascara eyelashes her eyes are dark brown, like Graham's. She doesn't protest Graham's hand slipping under the hem of her skirt, or Damon's hand following it. " _She's_ a boring cow."

Graham can't help but kiss her again for saying that, or for her squeezing and rolling his nipple between her fingertips more gently and sensuously than Damon had ever done. _Girls ooh I love girls._ Her thighs spread a little on the seat, and Graham's pinky dares to pull at the elastic on the thigh edge of her pants."You'll have to understand that Graham has a special thing for taxis," Damon says indulgently.

"Oh really?" grins Emma, then throws her head back against the seat; Graham's now got his forefinger in, sliding in the moisture coming from inside her, working furiously on love-biting her neck. "I see there's a kind of sentimentality at work... some kind of ... nice memories, maybe?"

"Now, Graham, save some for later," Damon says, wagging his finger.

"Shut up, Damon," says Emma, sliding her hand up Damon's thigh.

"Yeah, shut up," agrees Graham.

Emma's flat has a poster of the Velvet Underground banana cover, coloured silk scarves on every lamp, and a persistent smell of incense. She makes them take their shoes off at the door; the main room is almost entirely taken up by a full-size bed and about thirty crates of records. Graham wonders if he should propose marriage on the spot, then hastily reminds himself, _You haven't even fucked her yet. Fuck her first. Owning original pressing Pink Floyd 45s will not make up for bad sex._ Emma steps over a pile of textbooks and CDs to the bathroom; the sound of water running in a sink comes out. Graham, suddenly apprehensive again, looks at Damon, who is shrugging out of his T-shirt and then flicking through the crates of records. "What should I do?" Graham whispers.

"I'd start by getting undressed." Damon turns to Graham, takes off his glasses, lifts up Graham's shirt, and begins to suck the nipple that Emma had so recently played with. Graham's excitement threatens to carry him away. When Emma comes back into the room, Damon lets Graham's shirt fall and steps back, pretending to be interested in the records again.

Emma's got hot, damp towels in an orange porcelain bowl. "Put some music on, Damon," she says, edging her way sideways past Graham and reclining on her bed. With a few more casual, almost imperceptible movements, she scatters tubes and bottles and foil packets across her bedside table, and pulls her implausible dress over her head. Under it, she's got black lace lingerie, the lines of it different than the lines of her tan; she must wear something a lot more modest on the beach.

"You really _did_ know we were coming," Graham marvels.

"I've been _planning_ ," Emma says fervently. "I was so excited to meet you finally, and hear the group. I've heard your demo - I listen to it constantly on headphones. I knew that whatever Damon was involved in had to be top marks, but still... I'm amazed. A lot of it's to do with you, Graham."

"Well - that's - thanks. I worked hard on it. Sometimes I wonder that it's too, I dunno, busy..."

While he's talking, Damon says, "Lift your arms, Graham," and then yanks Graham's stripy T-shirt off over his head. Then he busies himself with records again.

Graham is startled. "You deceptive little evil -" he says, then shakes his head with frustration. _Not making sense. On drugs. From here on out, it'll all be context._ Graham turns back to Emma, shimmering in the rose-coloured light, half-reclining on the pink bedspread, and lightly kicking Damon's butt with the point of her toe. "Tonight was the first time you've seen us play?"

"Yeah, you weren't really gigging yet when I was up in London last. And _you_ were in Colchester for the weekend for some reason - Damon told me what it was, but I don't remember now. Damon told me all about you." Emma's knowing grin is entirely too much like Damon's.

"Really... what did he say?" Graham asks slowly. Damon's finally chosen a record; some kind of meandering psychedelic nonsense that Graham can't recognise. Damon flashes him the record sleeve, and Graham still doesn't recognise it, seeing only the pink light reflecting from its surface.

Emma rolls her eyes. "Oh, I can't tell you that. A lot of it was in the strictest confidence. And besides, it'd only embarrass you." She reaches behind her back - from where Graham stands, from inside Graham's tripped-out head, the posture seems almost nauseatingly surreal - and unclasps her bra, shrugging the lace off her shoulders and breasts.

While Graham stands there and stares, unable to move, Damon turns back to him and reaches around Graham's waist and unzips his jeans. Without the zipper holding them up on his hipbones, the jeans immediately slip off him and sag around his knees. Graham whips around. "What are you doing?" he yelps indignantly, blushing and laughing.

Damon sizes him up, eyes half-lidded. "You're taking too long."

"And what'd you put on the record player? What is that?"

Damon closes his eyes, pained. "It's fucking _Space Oddity_ , mate."

"Oh... oh, fuck... Whaaa..."

"You've taken acid before, haven't you?" asks Emma with slight concern in her voice.

"Of course I have," says Graham defiantly. "Dozens of times."

"Bullshit," Damon quips. "You've dosed four times and I was there every single time. I _gave_ it to you every single time."

"Not every _single_ time," Graham denies. "I've done drugs without you." While Graham struggles to defend himself, Emma patiently eases down his Y-fronts and takes a good close look at his penis, half-hard and sort of wobbling about. "I once took acid with Alex and went bowling. _Without_ you."

"Why didn't you call me?" Damon wonders mildly, watching Emma.

"I think we both hated your guts that day," says Graham.

Emma dives in, grabs him, and takes his cock into her mouth. Graham makes a deep, sucking gasp of surprise. "Oh - I was almost - hoping you wouldn't - I don't know how much I can take without - " He runs out of words again. Emma has the same crochet technique that Damon has, and it dawns on him suddenly that Damon had to learn it from someone. Suddenly his jeans around his knees are completely offensive to him, and he has to pull away from Emma to be able to get them off. While he's struggling and kicking, Emma turns to the other side and begins to suck Damon.

What Graham wants more than anything right now is to look into Damon's eyes. But he can't. Damon's eyes are focused on Emma's face, or, where Emma's face would be if there wasn't a big red mane of hair in his line of sight. Damon pushes Emma's hair off her forehead, trying to watch, but Emma won't oblige him; as soon as he touches her hair, she takes her mouth off his penis and sits back, her eyes traveling back and forth between them. Damon stares at her; Graham stares at Damon. She seems to make a few quick mental calculations.

"Come here," she says, "stand next to each other. I want to look at you both together."

Neither one of them is thrilled about this. Damon's envious of Graham's curvy waist, how he manages to make being horribly skinny look graceful instead of like a half-starved spider monkey, and Graham's understandably intimidated by having someone actually measure his penis against Damon's, because who could help it? There they are, out in the open, both mostly hard now and jutting forward from their bodies. In the tinted light, Damon's soft full-body coat of blond down sparkles like tinsel. Next to him, Graham feels like a bleached newt. He mutters, "Spectacularly hung, isn't he?"

"Yeah," says Emma with a little smile.

Damon actually winces and blushes. "'S not spectacular," he mutters. "It's only slightly more than average, okay?" And under his breath, "Who knew you were such a size queen?"

Emma gazes up, sideways, at Graham, one of her hands stroking his hip, then goes down on him again. Graham smirks at Damon, who seems to be struggling to control his resentment. Graham hovers between satisfaction, wistfulness, and not caring if a bomb drops on the flat; with a smaller, swifter, more pointed tongue, Emma's use of the technique is truly staggering, quite putting Damon's to shame. _But it's not about the technique,_ Graham muses, trying to keep his mind off images of fucking and thrusting and spilling, _think about anything else but that, don't come yet, what I_ want _is to know it's_ Damon's _mouth on me sucking and lapping and I'm not doing so well at this clearing of the mind. Think of maths. Maths will keep you from coming too soon. Why does it have to bob like that when he walks or moves? Why isn't it in my mouth right now? She's making me all wet. All wet all over._

Damon fiddles on the bedside table, and then he's crouched behind Emma, lifting her hips with his hands so that she's up on her knees. Her mouth and hand leave his penis, and Graham can't quite see clearly, but it looks like Damon's face is buried in her ass. "I'm not a size queen," Graham replies, whole minutes after Damon's original comment. "I just haven't got one like that, okay?"

"Your dick is perfectly lovely, Graham." Damon's eyebrow quirks above the horizon of her behind.

"Shut up, Damon," Emma takes a moment to say. She looks up at Graham. "Your dick _is_ perfectly lovely," she agrees softly. "I adore it." She scratches her head. "It _is_ an 'it', isn't it? It's not a 'he'?"

Graham laughs. "No, no, let's not go there." He notices with relief that the overwhelming sensation of impending orgasm has receded quite a bit, and he feels he's gotten a second wind. The Bowie, now that he's able to place it, helps. _I think my spaceship knows which way to go._ Damon yanks Emma's knickers off and tosses them across the room (they land on the aforementioned Pink Floyd 45s) and Emma begins again, now only using her mouth.

Graham closes his eyes and watches the marvelous cascade of psychedelic imagery coming from inside his mind; most of it isn't sexual in the sense that it involves humans having sex with other humans, but he could see a succession of the sexuality of everything. Toasters getting it on with forks, and electricity. Trees fucking soil. Plastic drinks umbrellas having it off with pina coladas... "I'm _so high_ ," he says in a breathless giggle.

From the periphery of his perception comes Damon's voice. "If you don't like what I'm doing, tell me to stop now - if you don't tell me to stop now, I'm going to do whatever I like." Graham doesn't know who he's talking to, and the slick rhythm of Emma's mouth doesn't stop. Or, at least, not right away. At first she has to open her mouth to gasp and moan briefly, then she almost bites Graham and then lets out a deep, terrible moan. Graham has to open his eyes to see what's happening; across the bed, Damon is forcing his prick between Emma's buttocks. Graham is shocked beyond shock. Damon, slow-moving, wears a cruel expression. "Just a _bit_ more," he mutters.

Graham wonders if he ought to be seeing this, but then Damon says, "Graham, come here, watch." Graham has always sort of wondered. He crawls across the bed until he's next to Damon and takes a look down. Greasy, slippery, far too intimate; Graham is fascinated and repelled at the sight of Damon's penis, almost entirely to the hilt, inside Emma's backside. Smoothly, in and out it goes. "You sure you don't want it?" Damon whispers in Graham's ear. Damon's fingers knead the yielding flesh of her buttocks, the dark tan ending in a fainter tan stripe, and then shading into a stripe of creamy paleness right at the center. Graham can't focus his eyes on it; it's just a throbbing swollen muddle, and he can't stand to watch and turns away, biting into Damon's shoulder. Damon sighs, "You sure?" Then louder, "It feels good, doesn't it, Emma?"

"As long as you're gentle, it's good." Emma's voice comes faint and muffled through a pillow she's clinging to, clutching it to her face. Most likely biting it.

"See, that's the problem... I don't want to be gentle... I don't get to _fuck_ _arse_ very often." Damon punctuates this with two rough thrusts.

Emma yelps. Graham is so addled at this point that he can't tell if it's agony, or what. "No, please, you promised," she begs into the pillow.

"Sorry, I _missed_ that." Damon gives her one more.

The next sound from Emma is something like a desperate cat crying to be let inside on a rainy night. And then she begins to laugh. Graham wipes a heavy film of sweat from his forehead with one hand, while the other hand rests on Damon's tense, moist shoulder. Damon turns his head without pausing his hips, and touches Graham's ear with his tongue.

"Fuck her, Graham," he whispers.

Graham sinks down onto his side, running his hand along Emma's side. She's as hot as a furnace. Carefully he slides down as far underneath her as he can, letting his hand trail up to her breasts, caressing them, pulling on the nipples. He kisses her throat. Damon pulls her back and sideways, so that she loses her balance on one arm and collapses down on her side, facing Graham. Graham kisses her mouth. Damon pulls her leg up and secures it with his forearm. He's stayed inside her all this time. He begins to kiss the lovebites that Graham left on her neck in the taxi.

Graham looks into her eyes while his hand guides his cock against her pubic mound, getting mixed up in a gooey tangle of moisture. If he moves his hand just slightly, he brushes against Damon's thigh or Damon's balls. Emma stares back at Graham, unsmiling, her eyes wide, reflecting him. When his cock head slips inside her, she blinks quickly, as if trying to prepare herself. Still, she cries out when he buries himself in her cunt. "Oh, God, oh, God," she says.

Graham also breaks out laughing. He's so indescribably high. Not just the drugs - the ecstasy now on the tail end of its peak but still making him feel like he's a melting pool of wax that just ran into two other pools of melting wax and the flame on the wick leaps higher and higher but just the idea, the knowledge of what he's doing, how he got here, who he's with. "Yes, God," he agrees. He reaches around to take hold of her buttocks, but encounters Damon's flank instead. He takes hold of Damon's buttocks instead and pulls him in.

"Oh _God_!" Emma shrieks. "He doesn't _need_ your help!"

"Need's not the same as want," Graham murmurs. He can feel Damon. Through her. On the inside of her body. He can feel Damon's cock inside her. He wants to slam himself into her. He wants to slam into Damon. He can feel him right there. On an unspoken signal, both of them pull back, and slide in at once.

Emma goes into a moment of spasm. It takes Graham a moment to realise that she's had an orgasm, because she didn't make any sounds, but her cunt clamps down on him hard for a second and then releases him, sloppy with juice. He and Damon do it again, just for fun. Graham locks his fingers into Damon's, and they trade off pumping at her. Emma's off in her own little world, so Graham looks at Damon. Damon gazes back, a light-hearted smile on his face. Graham leans up over her and he and Damon kiss on the lips, filling her again and again.

Emma struggles slightly between them, and Graham drops back, propped on his elbow, lazily fucking. Emma tries to look at them both, but Graham's the closest. She has the weirdest expression on her face. "You blokes are in love!" she bursts out.

"Uh-huh," Damon drawls.

"Terribly," says Graham.

"One of you - stop - one of you has to stop. Please. I can't - take - this." Emma has real pleading in her voice, but Damon just fucks harder, rocking her over onto her face on the bed. Graham slides out and away, but only for a moment; soon he's back up on his knees, facing them, masturbating furiously. Damon opens his mouth and sticks out his tongue in Graham's general direction, and Graham obliges him by slapping Damon lightly across the face with his cock, leaving a trail of clear goo across his cheek. Damon sticks his tongue out again, but it's too late; Graham's coming now, hugely, massively, overflowing his hand and dripping onto his thighs and Emma's shoulder. He meant to come on Damon's face. He shakes his hand, flinging semen at Damon anyway. Then he runs his hand through his hair, trying to wick off some of the sweat "Oh, shit," he says.

Neither of his partners notices, fortunately. Emma's face is screwed up in pain and Damon's got his eyes closed, lost in the rhythm of fucking her deeply and slowly. "Damon, please stop," she begs, "I'm not kidding. Don't take it out on me."

Damon does stop then. Almost sadly, he kisses her semen-spattered shoulders. "Sorry," he murmurs.

"I think you should fuck Graham." She audibly sighs with relief when his penis leaves her.

"Graham has other ideas," Damon says.

"Don't talk about me like I'm not here," Graham says. He reaches over and grasps Damon's still-hard cock. "You don't know what ideas I have."

"D'you want me to fuck you?" Damon presses little kisses into Graham's mouth. His body fur now glistens dark with sweat. "In front of this girl? You want that?"

"Yeah," Graham breathes, "fuck me."

Emma wipes herself clean with one of the damp towels, now gone quite cold. She slips two of her fingers into her vulva and pumps them slowly. "You need me here to watch?" she smirks.

Damon turns to her with a heavy-lidded gaze. "I need you here because you're wonderful," he replies. "I need you here because you're not through fucking us. You can take a bit off, but you're not through. You want to fuck Graham too, don't you?"

"I want to watch you fuck him," Emma says.

"He fucks me, you know," Damon tells her. Graham gnaws on his neck.

"Does he fuck you like you do me?"

Damon gently detaches Graham and pushes him down onto his face, next to Emma's legs. Graham wrestles with his arms and the bedspread until he's comfortable, or as comfortable as he can get with a thousand psychedelic volts coursing through his bloodstream, making him feel like another orgasm is right about to happen, every second. Damon's hands on his back and thighs feel like fishhooks trying to tear him to shreds, and yet when the same hands slide between his damp buttocks, it's the smoothest thing he's ever felt. Graham wants a pillow to bite, too. "Oh, he's far more rough," Damon says. Emma hisses, dismayed, imagining.

"I want to fuck you till I can see sunlight from the other side," Graham mutters.

"He's rough, he's brutal, he calls me names..." Damon's hand pauses, leaves for a second, then comes back covered with warm, slippery slime. Graham idly wonders for a second if it's semen, then realises how impractical that would be. "But I've gotten him addicted to coming on my face."

Emma laughs softly. "Oh, I bet that wouldn't be too much of a challenge. "

"I'm a painter," Graham pipes up.

"Ssh," says Damon. The slippery hand transforms into a slippery finger poking into Graham's anus. "It's easy," Damon says. "Focus on your prick. What's your prick doing?"

"It's getting hard," Graham whimpers.

Damon pumps him gently with the finger, then pulls it out and adds another finger. Graham sucks in his breath. Damon shushes him again, continuing the gentle, but increasingly intense, fingerfuck. Emma asks, "How long have you...?"

"Seven weeks," Damon answers. "And six days. And two hours."

Graham breaks into tears, which fall harmlessly and invisibly into the bedspread. _My God, he loves me, it's real, it's really happening._

"Don't be scared, Graham." Damon says to him, kissing his back, kissing his cheeks and ears. While his mouth lingers on Graham's neck, the two fingers pull out and are replaced by three. Graham lets out a strangled grunt. "Ah, see, that's as big as the monster gets. You can take that."

Emma's whisper comes right next to Graham's ear. "But it gets _all the way_ inside you..."

Graham knows that he's visibly afraid. He's sweating all over, buckets, alternating cold and hot. Damon's fingers smoothly violate him at the same pace as his breathing; as his breathing deepens and quickens, Damon's fingers follow. He can't think of anything to say. He's beyond the ability to speak now. Emma kisses his other cheek. "Here," she says, "take a deep breath." Just instinctively, Graham does what she says, and breathes in a wretched smell like the bottom of his laundry pile three weeks in.

And he feels a falling rush, delightful vertigo, all the tension in his body flowing away. And the head of Damon's cock pushing its way into his lubed asshole, and the sweet strangeness of being violated to an unbelievable depth. "Oh my God! Oh my God!" he moans. No pain. Just weird bliss.

"Give him more amyl. I want to fuck him hard," Damon says, his voice low and thick.

He grabs the top of Graham's hair and pulls his head up. Graham opens his eyes and stares in panic at Emma, waving a tiny open bottle under her own nose. Her knees, drawn up to her chest, are bright red and a little raw-looking, carrying the pattern of the bedspread burned into them. In taffy-pull slow motion, she leans forward and holds the bottle out in front of Graham. Before he knows what he's doing, he's taken another deep whiff of the stuff, and his brain does flip-flops out of the world...

...and back in, to Damon yelping like a dog. "Graham, relax!" he pleads. "There's tight, and then there's strangulation. Please ease up."

Graham barely even knows what he's talking about, but he does force himself to relax even further than he already is. And Damon's cock is gone from inside him, and Damon rolls Graham over onto his back. Once they're facing each other, Damon lies on top of Graham and begins covering his face with kisses and toying with his cock. "Kiss my mouth," Graham mumbles. "Are you done?"

"No," confesses Damon.

"Did you fuck me hard?"

"Could you feel it?"

"Oh, yeah like a jackhammer." Bits of it float to the surface of his mind - being stabbed from the inside sideways as Damon's thrusts grew reckless, Damon bending over and touching Graham's slick back with his chest, the sound of flesh smacking, Emma moaning sympathetically. His own spine, tingling, on fire.

"Do you want me to do you slow?" Damon's hands slide up the insides of Graham's thighs, pulling them apart.

"Please."

Damon has no further need to force his cock inside; Graham's an eager, lubed mess, actually arching up to receive him. "Listen to you," Damon smiles, moving his face away from Graham's swiping tongue. "Look at you. You're the slut, not me."

"You were right," Graham whispers.

"Next you'll be begging me to come in your mouth."

Graham closes his eyes, arches and smiles. "No that's not going to happen."

Damon laughs. "Emma, give him more drugs."

"I think he's fine," says Emma softly. Graham looks over at her, lying blinking sleepily next to them, and he puts out his hand, wishing he could concentrate more on her but not while Damon's fucking him tonguing him and with every thrust, whispering in Graham's ear "I love you", too softly to be overheard. And Graham can only close his eyes and forget that everything else exists.


	8. (8)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a bastard of a morning after, but Graham's sort of used to those. What's new to him is how comfortable Damon is, navigating queer spaces in a town he doesn't even live in. Might as well neck a few cocktails and struggle to talk about it... Warning for homophobic behavior and speech and minor violence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for not hitting my self-imposed deadline, but that means today completes Luminous with a TRIPLE update. I've got an excuse - ever had an ulcerated cornea? Makes reading a challenge. Makes life without screaming in pain every five minutes a challenge. As soon as I recovered slightly, I made sure Luminous took its place on Ao3!

**Graham.**  
_Tonight I died in his embrace. I died over and over again, with that flame-haired Fate alternately laughing and sobbing in exact counterpoint to me - when I sobbed, she laughed, and vice versa. And the world turned upside down and I saw clear through to the centre of myself and found Damon there. The only one in the world I know, the only one I really know. And how much of him I don't understand would fill a thousand libraries. And no book could describe the stark terror I feel when I touch him, or my delight when he touches back._

_I fancied him before I understood that that's what my strange feelings were. I didn't fancy birds in that particular way, that's for sure. All I knew was that I wanted to be with him, all the time. I didn't want to imitate him, or be him, or even do the things he did. I just wanted to be at his side, have his voice in my ears, have his smirks or smiles or snarls right in front of me. And I still feel like that. I feel it more than ever. I don't want him to leave my sight, even though he's said he loves me. He said it. He showed me he loves me. Will he despise me for worrying? Fuck it. Let him despise me. Graham Coxon is the master of Graham Coxon's feelings. Damon doesn't own the way I feel._

_Just because I love him doesn't mean he owns me..._

 

**Damon.**  
_He looks so much like a child when he sleeps. I remember with a shock how young he is. How much more I know now than I did when I was twenty-one. I wish I could protect him from all the pain and trauma a year can bring. I can only vow to do my best; he's under my wing now, and I've got my back to the wind. But there's only so much I can do ... and oughtn't he to learn for himself how much things hurt? Isn't that how we grow? By building up layers of scar tissue?..._

_... Oh God, what am I doing to him? How long can I let it continue before we rip each other to shreds? And am I only looking after my own arse, in that case? I've got a thicker skin than Graham has; I can take a little bit more abuse. Am I insulting him by thinking he can't handle himself? My sweet boy. Look at those sinful lashes on his cheeks. But he's not a child; he's a man. And what does it ultimately matter to me if he's utterly destroyed? Can't he sort out his own problems?Ugh... I should never have touched him. I should never have responded to his touch. I should never have invited him round that one day for tea and then challenged him to wank with me, trying to see whether or not his mind was truly open to my suggestion. What the hell did I know? I was fifteen. And he was fourteen. Of course his mind was open to my suggestion. But I was shocked all the same, though I carefully didn't show it, of course. After a moment or two of staring at me, he didn't either. We have never spoken of it since, though at the time we both seemed so casual about it; it's just not the kind of thing that comes up in conversation, even though it affects the rest of your life. I know he wonders why I did it in the first place, though I bet he can figure it out now._

_Poor innocent... I wanted to tear him apart last night, my passion was so fierce. I treasured every gasp and yelp of pain, treasured taking his virginity, knowing that I'd be the only one, probably ever. That he'd be mine forever, if only in this small way. What is it about my love for him that makes me want to destroy him?_

*** 

Graham's head aches so much when he wakes up that he wants to cry.

He forgets about his head when he rolls over, hoping there's a glass of water somewhere nearby, and he feels a throb of dull, but increasing pain inside him. "Oh, God," he moans, gritting his teeth and wincing.

"Water's two inches to the right of where your right hand is now," says a voice.

Graham spends a moment remembering which one "right" is, grasps a cool moist glass, and sits up, hungrily gulping down its contents. The pain in his head yells for attention. Reluctantly, Graham opens his eyes. Across the room, a blurry Emma sits in a reclining stuffed chair, wearing a black shiny dressing gown, her feet up on an ottoman. 

"Where are my glasses?" Graham rasps at her. 

"They're on the table - same place you got the water." 

Graham puts his glasses on. Even through the smudges, he can see the cold, closed expression on Emma's face. Also, that she's painting her toenails bright blue. "Uh... what time is it? Where's Damon?" 

"He's gone down to the pub for lunch," says Emma. "Remember, you were supposed to meet there at noon. It's one-fifteen now." 

"Oh, Christ, yeah... right..." Graham hunts for his scattered clothes, suddenly horrified to be scrambling around naked on Emma's fluffy pink carpet. Suddenly shy. "I guess I'd better go down there and meet them... er..." 

"Yeah, you should," says Emma. 

"Thanks for letting me sleep," Graham adds, twisting his shoe onto a bare foot (if he had been wearing socks, they're lost now). 

"It wasn't my idea," Emma tells him. "Damon convinced me that you wouldn't be out much longer, and it would look better if you didn't come back together. I'd have to say that's true, if the others don't know." 

"They do know," says Graham. "That's the problem." 

"Oh, you're off to a _great_ start." 

"Look," says Graham, trying to comb his hair with his fingers, and finding his hair is a caked, impenetrable mess. "It's complicated, you understand?" 

"It's called a closet, Graham," Emma points out. 

"I'm not - see, I'm not -" 

"You might have fooled me. Are you through?" 

"Er, yeah," says Graham. "I'll be going now. Why did you let me stay?" 

"Because you _are_ the best guitarist I've ever heard," she says. "And that's still worth something to me." She stretches in her chair and smiles at him. "I'm not angry at you, Graham, I think you're sweet. I'm not really angry at Damon either. I did invite you in and make myself your plaything. I just wasn't expecting - I feel a bit used, as funny as that sounds." Graham squirms. "Go on. But let Damon know that you'd better not expect to stay here tonight; I couldn't take another night of that, no matter how many drugs I was on. Neither could you, I don't think. Take care of yourself." She stands up and walks over to him, and slides her hand down into his back pocket. Graham stands frozen in place. "And, er, use these next time, all right? By the way, that's your own spunk in your hair. You might want to comb it sometime." 

Graham is out on the street before he checks his pocket and finds that she's put a strip of three condoms in. 

It's a long walk through Brighton back to the pub, and it's almost two o'clock when Graham drags himself in. Fortunately for his heaving stomach, any free food that was available has long since been cleared away. Damon and Dave are setting up the instruments for soundcheck. "Sorry I'm so late," Graham says. "Is there any way I can get a pint of bitters." 

Damon's already got one for him. Dave is already a bit drunk, stumbling slightly into his bass drum. "You're always here for the important bits," Dave says ingratiatingly, grinning. 

"Alex?" Graham asks. 

"He'll be round." 

Graham really wants to talk to Damon, ask him about the night previous, but Damon is very busy with plugs and cords and things, so Graham makes himself busy too, pulling down the beer as fast as he can between patching pedals together. And just as he finishes, Alex comes in, so fresh off the shag that he's still got traces of lipstick on his chin, ready to play, and Graham has to put it off even further. It's not until they've finished the sound check and are putting things away that Alex leans into Graham and sniffs his forehead. "What've you got in your hair, Graham?" 

"It's a long story, Alex." 

"I'll buy you a Bloody Mary and you can tell me about it." 

"Actually, no, I've got to talk to Damon for a moment." 

Alex looks peeved, but otherwise not suspicious. Graham tells Damon to meet him in the gents' as soon as he's got a moment. Graham washes his hair in the lavatory sink, scrubbing at the hardened crust with his fingernails until his hair strokes smooth between his fingers. There aren't any paper towels, of course, so he strips off his shirt and uses it to dry his face and hair. Damon comes in just then, and stands with his hip cocked against the door, eyeing him. "What is it, Graham?" he murmurs. 

"Just checking in to make sure that last night actually did happen like that." 

"I don't know exactly what you experienced, but it was probably similar to what I experienced." 

"You probably got a shower, though, didn't you?" Graham slips his now-damp shirt back on. He smells awful. 

Damon smirks. "Emma give you your walking papers?" 

"Apparently we're not welcome there again tonight." 

Damon makes a sour face, and is knocked slightly aside by someone coming in to use the toilet. Damon angles his head at Graham, and Graham follows him out of the pub and towards where the van is parked. Graham thinks eagerly of his clean shirt. "I can't say as I blame her," Graham continues. "We did sort of... of..." 

"Give her the fuck of two lifetimes," Damon mutters. "Pity to have second thoughts now."

"She did give me these," Graham says, pulling the condoms out of his pocket and putting them in Damon's hand. Damon stares at them, a funny smile coming over his face. "Why didn't we?" Graham hisses. "Now we have to fucking get tested and everything. It was really stupid." 

Damon looks a little pained. "Sex is always a terrible risk, Graham, you know that. 'Sides, we were all so wrecked it's a wonder we could remember which hole was which. So we'll get tested. You ought to do it regularly anyway. God knows I already do. And besides, I wanted your first time to be the ultimate, really. Skin on skin." 

Graham blushes furiously. "First and last. I don't think I'm going to do that again." He shoots Damon a sideways glance, and that's all he needs to say about how much his bum hurts today. (But at the same time there's a delicious tugging in his balls even as he thinks of the pain of Damon's cock brutalising him, insisting, demanding release for them both.) 

"I probably knew that already," Damon muses. "No apologies. That's as rough as what you do." 

Conversation crashes to a halt once they reach the van and find a couple of others there. Graham changes his shirt and brushes his teeth with bottled water and salt from packets nicked from Barbara's Café, home of the 85p breakfast. When he's done with this, Damon's disappeared. But there's Alex, and he's holding up a ten-pound note and mouthing the words BLOODY MARY, and Graham shakes his head and grins, glad he's still got friends without complications attached. 

*** 

After the gig (a bit less well-received than the night before; the band, a little worse for the wear from the evening before, is on the sloppier side of chaos and all the songs go wrong in all the wrong ways), Dave sticks around to hear the Uptights, who he'd missed the night before, Alex disappears with the pub owner's wife again, and Damon and Graham walk out along the darkening street. "I'd like to take your hand," Damon says after a long time of silence. 

"Don't," says Graham. 

"Why not?" 

"We're out on the street. People might see us." 

"Graham, we're in Brighton. Britain's Gay Mecca. Nobody's going to think twice to see two blokes holding hands on the street." 

"Don't be daft," Graham grimaces. "I need another drink." 

"I want to hold you," says Damon, "like I did last night." 

"We can't go round to Emma's again," Graham says. 

"Let's go to a bar then," says Damon. 

Damon chooses something a little bit flashier than Graham's comfortable with, playing videos instead of football, and not a single woman anywhere in the place. "Dez..." Graham says apprehensively. 

"It's a bar," says Damon, sliding backwards onto a bar stool. The eyes of almost every man at the bar are immediately clamped onto Damon's bony little ass in shabby, barely-held-up jeans. "Where I can hold your hand and nobody will mind. We're safe here. What's yours?" 

"Vodka straight," says Graham. 

"Neat, Graham," says Damon with a grin. "It's 'neat'." 

"Vodka," Graham repeats, louder this time, staring into Damon's eyes, "straight." 

Damon snatches for Graham's hand and holds it between his own. To his surprise, Graham doesn't try to pull away, and he doesn't resist when Damon pulls him closer, pulls him into the vee of his spread legs and holds Graham against him. Graham has his eyes closed. "Did I really hurt you?" Damon whispers into Graham's ear. 

"Yeah," Graham says slowly. "It's not like I didn't want you to." 

"I know," says Damon. 

"Brighton seems like a dream ..." 

"You're still in it, Gray." Damon presses his lips against Graham's cheek, catching a faint harsh rasp of stubble against his lips. "It's not over yet."

They are interrupted by the bartender bringing over a huge double vodka and a tall gin-and-tonic. Damon and Graham take their drinks, lean against the bar, and begin drinking them the way they drink in bars in London; hardly pausing to take a breath in between determined, desperate gulps. Damon finishes his first. "Another?" he asks Graham. 

"With tonic in it this time." 

With fresh drinks in hand they wend their way further into the bar. Towards the back, there are some tables set up, and then a darker corner where men are playing odd little games with each other. Graham tries hard not to stare, and doesn't quite succeed. Damon stops Graham by putting his hand out to his chest. "Does this scene make you uncomfortable?" Damon asks. 

_Always the fucking tour guide._ "No," says Graham defiantly. He might as well have a neon sign above his head that reads _I'm lying._

Damon smiles a bit, and sets his drink down on one of the tables. He rests his wrists on Graham's shoulders and leans close to Graham without their bodies actually touching. "Do you believe in auras?" Damon asks. 

"You've asked me this before," Graham says. And then Damon grins wickedly for a second before returning to his calm, drowsy expression, moving very slightly to the music. The last time Damon had asked him about auras, and leaned in without touching, was the night at the last dance at school, when they had danced together for one whole song without noticing or caring if anyone was looking. He knows Graham remembers. And just as then, Damon leans even closer, fractions of an inch away. 

"I can feel your aura, Graham. It's hot... and I bet it's orange. Do you see mine?" 

Graham says nothing, as then. He's lost, hung up on Damon's eyes, how they shift colours along with the changes of light in the bar. Imagining how his smooth wide lips would feel. Damon's mouth, so wide it could open up and swallow Graham's whole soul, and Graham wants him to swallow it... how he wants Damon to swallow... 

What makes it different from the school dance is that now Graham kisses Damon. Graham presses himself against Damon first, slides his hand up under Damon's shirt to caress his tight, flat back muscles and run xylophone over the knobs of his spine. "I wonder if I could wank you off in here without anyone seeing it," Damon murmurs into Graham's mouth. Graham kisses him harder, not wanting Damon to talk anymore, not to ruin everything as it is - his headache still bad, his anus still raw, his bloodstream still questionable, but still it's perfect because they're together, touching. 

Damon slips his hand down the front of Graham's jeans (hanging even looser than usual, since Graham hasn't eaten since Friday breakfast) and cups his hand around Graham's phallus, holding his balls in the palm and scraping his fingernails lightly along the thickening shaft. Graham forces his tongue roughly into Damon's mouth, forces Damon against the wall, forcing his thighs apart with his knee. 

"...God!" 

Graham lifts his head and looks at Damon - the voice was so familiar, and so nearby, but at the same time it wasn't Damon's voice, and Damon has gone white as a sheet and staring like he's seen a ghost. Graham whips around sloppily - the alcohol muddying his reflexes - and snarls out "What the fuck do you want?" 

It's Alex. 

Alex James is standing there, staring at them, as pale as Damon, mouth hanging open. Around them, the other men are staring with vague interest. Damon shoves Graham away and wipes his mouth with the back of his arm. "We're leaving," Damon snaps, grabbing the arms of Alex and Graham and herding them out the door before either one of them can react. 

Outside, though, Alex grabs Damon by the biceps and slams him against the brick wall of the building. "Don't treat me like I'm a fucking child!" Alex yells. "What were you doing in there?" 

"What does it look like we were doing?" Damon yells back. 

"What were _you_ doing in there?" Graham asks. 

Alex stands there with his mouth hanging open for a while before he's able to make any sounds come out. "I - I was looking for you," he says finally. The neon sign lights up again, this time behind Alex. "I thought it might be someplace I might be able to find you, in light of recent developments, wouldn't you say?" 

Damon grins madly. "They're going to have to put you back together from a kit when I'm done with you," he snarls, lunging for Alex. This time, Alex is ready, and he manages to hold Damon at arm's length for long enough for him to give Damon a kick to the stomach. Damon vomits up his gin-and-tonics onto Alex's shoes, but even before the cascade of sick has hit the pavement, he's punching and clawing at Alex's face. Graham just stands there and watches them, feeling all the liquor of the entire day sinking into him at once, weighing him down, watching his two best friends beat each other senseless. 

Dave drives up in the van and sticks his head out the window. "Oi! Hooligans! Into the van, you can kill each other just as well in London!" he bellows. 

"Get into the van," Graham says too softly for anyone to hear. "Please. Just get into the van." 

Damon's got Alex on the ground and he's trying to slam his head into the gutter. Alex scissors his legs and Damon takes a nasty tumble onto the pavement. When he comes up again, his face is covered in blood. "Fuck it," he splutters, and then spits a wad of blood and saliva at the groaning, prostrate Alex. He shoulders roughly past Graham and into the back of the van. 

Graham helps Alex up. 

In the van, Dave is glaring into the rearview mirror. "I won't ask! I won't ask!" he shouts. He screeches his tires on the street, turning wildly into traffic. 

Alex holds his head between his hands and Damon wipes off his face with Graham's grotty T-shirt from the day before. It doesn't do much except make the mask of blood a little thinner and smoother. His bottom lip is split and swelling up. Alex doesn't look much better, snatching the shirt from Damon and wiping off his shoes. The end result is so disgusting that Alex rolls down the window and tosses the horrid shirt out into the road. Graham puts his head between his hands. 

"Don't fucking say a word," Damon hisses. 

Alex says nothing, but Graham has never seen his eyes so full of malice, so full of passion...if he could kill with a look, Damon would be dead a thousand times over. Graham suddenly wants to be at home, alone, in his bed, with his guitar and his pillows and his hangover. He wants to be away from all of them. He wants to be back in Damon's arms, but in the past - not this vicious dog Damon, snarling at Alex with bloodstained teeth. He wonders why Damon is so angry. 

And what _was_ Alex doing there?... 


	9. (9)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More alcohol doesn't solve anything, but that doesn't stop Damon trying. Infused with ethanol courage, he goes to confront Alex. But Alex has no interest whatsoever in fighting.
> 
> Warnings for homophobia both internalized and manifested, ambiguous consent, explicit sex, and drug use (all in one scene!).

_always should be someone you really love_

In the van on the way home it is decided that the band will take some time off to recover from Brighton and attempt to put their lives back on course. Damon and Dave work it out in their usual style:

DAVE: I just want a week where I don't have to look at your dictatorial little smirk. A week. If you knew how behind I am at work -

DAMON: No. No break. We've got to practise until it doesn’t matter that _you're_ too pissed to poke.

DAVE: I'll leave. Give me any reason whatsoever.

DAMON: You wouldn't let yourself get behind at work if you didn't eat, sleep, and shit this group. You think you're the only one with problems? I've been sacked, Graham's flunking out… One day off.

DAVE: Five days.

DAMON: Three.

DAVE: Fine.

DAMON: Fine.

Meanwhile Graham huddles in the corner, on the floor, with his shirt over his head, and Alex spits blood into an empty beer bottle, staring out the window, completely disconnected from them all. No one says goodbye when they are dropped home - they just fling themselves out of the van, grab their gear, slam the door, and disappear. Damon, being last out, catches Dave's eye at the last minute and offers a weak smile, but Dave just curls his lip and turns away. Damon slams the door extra hard and stands there as the van roars away, lip trembling, his mind chasing itself in circles as he tries to figure out the best way to resolve this.

***

After worrying himself literally sick, Damon sleeps for a long time, much longer than is usual for him, even after a massive drug trip (and half a tab of blotter acid and half a tablet of E, no matter how strong, isn't massive by his standards). He wakes in the middle of the afternoon in a sprawled pile in the center of his mattress with vicious headache and a ghastly taste in his mouth. When he gets to the mirror in the bathroom and catches sight of himself, he realises that the taste is blood that's been trapped in his mouth all night, fermenting. And then he remembers Alex, that bastard Alex, staring at him and Graham kissing, like they had nine heads. _That bastard looking at me like that,_ Damon fumes, rinsing his mouth and then brushing his teeth furiously, _looking at me and Graham like that - I should have killed him. He deserved that kicking. I wish Graham hadn't had to see that look - it's been so hard for him to come in touch with that side of himself and there's his supposed friend Alex gaping at him like he's in the Fairy Freakshow._

Damon tastes fresh blood with his toothpaste, and glares at his bruised, slightly misshapen reflection. In his spinning head, the only clear emotion is rage at Alex, and he grasps desperately at it, hoping that it's the right thing to feel at the moment. Rage gives him welcome focus.

_He won't ever look at me like that again or I'll kill him. I'll finish what I started. This has got to be resolved today or I'll go mad, not to mention what it'll do to Graham; he's already half out of his mind. But first, I absolutely must have a drink._

He goes to the pub nearest to the house where Alex currently lives - across the path, in fact - and swirls a large whisky around his damaged mouth, trying not to wince outwardly as the alcohol stabs into his abraded gums and the split in his lip. Damon recognises a few girls from the college, but doesn't speak to them, and the sight of them gives him none of the usual pleasure. In fact, the sight of attractive young female students, and wondering how many of them Alex has already "had", increases his rage at Alex. _How dare he. How_ dare _he. He exploits women and disrespects me. Dave was all right with it before, wasn't he? All this trouble is Alex's fault, him poking his nose in where it wasn't wanted. I want him out of the group. But I can't give him the sack; we need him. Therefore he must die._ Damon's muttering to himself and tapping his broken fingernails on the surface of the bar, and a couple of girls heading his way to chat him up hastily decide to visit the toilets.

Another whisky soothes the pain caused by the first one, and leaves a satisfyingly raspy feeling on the back of his throat. He feels like a yob and he likes it. As he stands up, both whiskys go ramming down into his weakened body like a slot machine hitting jackpot. He half-marches, half-staggers out of the pub and up to the door of Alex's squat, which is not locked usually, and is not locked now.

The front room, usually packed with hippies and punks, seems deserted - hot and smelling like students live there, which is nearly gag-inducing in the heat. Damon leaps up the stairs two at a time. Alex's room is on the second floor, past the scary toilet and the room where the crazy girl lives. Damon recalls a snippet of conversation, wherein Alex bragged about having it off with the crazy girl and then telling her the next day that she must have dreamed it in her sleep, and growls as he throws open the door of Alex's room.

Alex is sitting in his hard metal chair, dressed only in his swimming shorts, listlessly plunking away at his unplugged bass. A cloud of cannabis resin smoke hits Damon in the head like a pillow with an iron hidden in it, and he reluctantly closes the door behind him. Alex blinks at the heaving, glaring Damon. "Whadd _yoo_ want?" Alex mumbles.

Damon rocks back on his heels, half-stoned already. He holds out his index finger ineffectually. "You leave me and Graham alone," he slurs, wagging the finger like a schoolmarm.

Alex smirks at Damon, his eyes thoroughly bloodshot. "Am I inconveniencing you right this minute?"

"You know what I'm talking about, mate. Put down the instrument and deal with me."

Alex shrugs, but he puts his bass back into its hard case and closes the lid. Then he slouches, relaxed with his arms at his sides, but keeping his distance. Damon immediately violates that, approaching and standing far too close to Alex; at this distance, Damon has to look up to glare at him, and it's just not scary. With his fringe combed forward over the gash at his temple, Alex bears no outward signs of injury, unlike Damon's lip and jaw. Alex begins to smile. "What the hell are you doing here?" Alex demands.

"I've come to wipe that smile off your face once and for all." Damon shoves Alex in the chest.

Alex cocks his head and blinks some more, but doesn't retreat or advance. "I don't get you, Damon."

Damon shoves him again, worried that he's losing his nerve. _If I don't wallop Alex, I'll look like a pansy and an idiot. I have to preserve my honour, Graham's honour. It's for Graham._ "Not so tough today, are you? Are you?" With another shove, there's nowhere left for Alex to go; he's up against the wall by his bed, all the convenient weapons on the other side of the room. Alex rolls his eyes, and Damon slaps him in the face. "Not so self-righteous today, are you?"

Alex's eyes wander to the ground. "You don't even know what you're doing."

"And you do. You've got all the answers and the opinions on what I'm doing."

Damon raises his hand to slap Alex again, but this time Alex grabs Damon's hand out of the air before it can impact anything. Damon pulls gently, but Alex keeps his grip; solid, but not painfully hard. An odd current runs from his sweat-damp palm onto the skin of Damon's wrist. Alex's eyes wander up from the ground to Damon's face a few inches away. "No," says Alex quietly.

Damon snatches his hand back, then lightning-fast catches Alex's wrists in his own hands. Alex's eyes widen with alarm, but he doesn't struggle away; he just stands still. Damon forces Alex's arms above his head and presses his torso against Alex, trapping him firmly against the wall. "Why are you so afraid of what Graham and I do?" Damon whispers, shoving his knee between Alex's bare thighs. "What scares you so much about it? You don't want to be in a band with two poofs? Afraid it might reflect badly on yourself?"

Alex, in a vague panic, looks everywhere around the room but at Damon. Damon presses his hips into Alex's. "Or are you afraid that it's contagious?"

Alex does look at Damon then. Alex gives Damon a long, thorough look. Damon finds himself giving Alex a long, thorough look right back, even though he has to look straight down Alex's body from where he's up against it. Alex had got a substantial bit of sun while in Brighton, and his skin has a glossy pale-gold sheen that Damon would kill to be able to achieve. Alex's skin is very good. He smells good too, for having been sitting in his oven-like room smoking hash all day. Damon tries to give Alex a look of hatred, but when he looks at Alex's face, Alex's expression is so strange, so naked, that the feeling of hatred dissolves.

When Damon's hand slips from Alex's wrist and goes skimming up his arm, Alex does nothing. When Damon has finished thoroughly stroking that arm, Alex hesitantly slips it around Damon's hip. It is Damon's turn to blink at the ground. _This isn't going how I meant it to at all. I thought he'd be twitching in a pool of his own blood right now; I didn't think I'd be trying to drink in as much contact with his skin as I possibly can before one of us comes to our senses._

Damon slides his arms around Alex's waist and pivots him, and he forces Alex to fall onto his bed with their arms still around each other. Damon quickly straddles Alex, holding him stationary with his knees, and strips his T-shirt off. Alex's expression vacillates between imploring Damon to stop with wide, traumatised eyes, and a blank, stoned version of what Damon now recognises as desire. Damon's mind reels with a hundred thousand questions and demands, but he can't figure out how to phrase any of them. And he can't bring himself to kiss Alex. Kissing him would be like a surrender, it'll be saying to Alex, _I only came here to fool around with you, I've wanted you all along, I really will fuck anything with a pulse. And it isn't true, it isn't true at all… but Alex still needs to be taught a lesson… though what lesson that is, what lesson I'll teach him by doing this, I don't know._

Damon unzips his jeans and rests his swollen penis on Alex's bare belly. Alex's eyes flutter towards it and back away again. Damon grabs one of Alex's hands and pulls it down between his legs, and with a hesitant touch, Alex takes Damon's penis into his hand. Damon makes a faint laugh of contempt, even though he hates himself instantly for doing so... but perhaps it's a laugh of disbelief? Of pure pleasure? Alex's shy hand, cool and moist, feels brilliant on him. The ambiguity makes Damon quiver. Not knowing what he's doing, that terror of the unknown, the possibility of utter disaster, is so erotic to him.

He inches back, reaches into Alex's swim trunks, and takes hold of Alex's prick.

Alex gasps like he's never been touched by anyone, ever before. His hand is sweaty now, and it's kind of chafing the skin on Damon's penis. Damon takes Alex's hand away, spits into it, and puts it back. Alex squeezes his eyes shut and holds them there. _He's terrified,_ Damon realises. _I shouldn't be doing this. I shouldn't be doing this to him._ He slides off Alex's legs, kneels by the side of the bed, and guides Alex's cock into his mouth. Alex gasps again, his long fingers sliding into Damon's hair. Damon is instantly resentful, but also quite interested in tasting Alex. _I have always wondered what he's like. I always wanted to force him to snog Graham and just watch the two of them, but they couldn't be less interested in each other._ Damon has never really gone much beyond verbal kidding with Alex on the matter; he'd kissed Alex on the mouth once before, after a particularly brilliant gig when they'd all been drunk as lords. And Damon hadn't remembered it; it was Graham who had to remind him of it. Damon isn't interested in kissing Alex right now; he wants to violate him. And yet he's on his knees on the floor giving Alex the crochet method.

Alex is breathing in faint moans now, and his hands attempt to move Damon's head a little faster. Damon springs up and shoves Alex over. "This is not about me," Damon snaps, squinting into Alex's flushed, shell-shocked face. "This is about you." He kneels over Alex, sprawled on his pillows, and holds his prick in Alex's face. Alex goes pale, and then red again; he opens his mouth a little bit, just enough for Damon to poke the glans between his lips. Damon feels a cruel thrill. "This is... about... you... sucking... me... off," he drawls. He wants to add, _And do it right or I'll give you a kicking anyway, you bloody hypocrite..._ but Alex immediately begins to do it right.

Really right.

Experienced right. His method of fellatio isn't quite as elegant as Damon's (in Damon's opinion) but it does have the advantage, as it were, of blazing him right up immediately. Alex's soft plush mouth sucks and slips up and down over the head while Alex uses his hand to pump the shaft thoroughly. It's a whore's method, designed to get a man off as quickly as possible. Damon wonders where he learned that - under what circumstances - whose cocks had Alex sucked? When? Why?

Damon pulls away. He doesn't want to come so soon, and Alex's method is guaranteed to bring him off in a matter of seconds. To his surprise, again, Alex's expression is wistful, almost pained. Damon's head spins and he regrets the whisky. _Is he enjoying this? I'm raping him, and he's enjoying it?_

Damon kicks his jeans away, pulls down Alex's shorts and drops them on the floor. He lies alongside Alex on the bed. They stare into each other's eyes for a minute, stroking their own cocks carefully. Alex reaches out his hand to Damon and hungrily strokes Damon's downy belly, trailing his finger down the darker, thicker stripe that leads to his pubic hair. Damon catches the finger and sucks on it. Alex's penis twitches hard. "You fancy a fuck?" Damon whispers.

"Yeah," Alex whispers back. His pupils are massive in their coffee-pool irises, and he licks his overripe, blushing mouth.

 _Er, not rape after all, then._ Damon's heart begins to pound furiously. "Have you got lubricant?"

"Of course I do," Alex says indignantly. Damon almost makes a sarcastic comment about Alex's rampant sex life, but he can't come up with anything that isn't idiotic. Alex now strokes Damon's cock with his hand. Damon is seized with the desperate desire to suck him off, feel the fount of semen overflow his mouth, spit it back at Alex, feed it back to him, drool it in a trail all over his body, but only having been in his mouth first...but then he thinks, _I'm going to skewer him, I'm going to pound him silly. I don't even love him and I don't think I care much if I hurt him and he must not care much either or else he'd put some fucking clothes on and kick me out. If he had any idea how furious I am at him_ _he'd be terrified. I could have bitten off his favourite bit and fed it back to him..._

In a brilliant convulsive spasm, Damon arches his back, his penis pulses in Alex's hand, and semen spews from him and all over Alex's thighs, balls, the crease of his groin. Faintly, as if coming from another room, he hears Alex softly, ruefully laugh.

***

_Whose. When. Why._

_I can never tell him. Especially not when he's feeding me cock, anointing me with an insane amount of jizm, especially knowing that he probably shagged poor Graham about sixty times this weekend. In this way as in all others Damon would have to be extraordinary and I don't know why I'm surprised._

_Would he even believe me or understand? — this golden boy who's always been a golden boy, who's always been beautiful and adored. He never was a fat nerd with glasses who thought he would never have a girl, ever, that a girl would never want to even touch him. That's me instead. Would Damon even believe me if I told him that I was the Chess Club slut? And the Chess Club was exclusively male when I was in school? Yes, I had them all, the chubby nerds, the skinny nerds, the nerds with a passing handsomeness and the nerds whose spots had spots. All those boys. They never told anyone about it because they didn't want to be queers, either. We all tried each other, once we knew that we all did — circle jerking, practise kissing, "practise" fingering, "practise" fucking. We weren't queers, we were just desperate. Well, not all of us were queers. I'm definitely not. I mean gay. Homosexual. Whatever. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with it, but I just know it's not what I am._

_But I never lost my taste for the sex, really. I can barely keep myself together sometimes if my lady friends aren't willing to play around a bit. Shocking how few modern women are willing to finger my bum, though just as shocking how many are willing to let me fuck theirs. It's the sensation that I want; I don't care so much where it comes from. I've let some extremely unpleasant men fuck me just because I want to feel that sensation. I can't do it myself, or I'd never touch another bloke or bring up the touchy subject to another girl. Thanks, God, for making our bodies so complicated._

_And here's Damon barging into my room with his cock all but hanging out of his trousers, spoiling for a row, like he didn't already do enough damage to my head. Now he wants to try to do some more. It's working; I want him. I like how pretty he looks when he has an orgasm; he sneers slightly, then drops his jaw and his eyes roll up under the slightly parted lids. Demonic. I wish he'd been in my chess club. Then again, if Graham's any indication, I'm lucky I was far away from him, otherwise I'd probably be in romantic love with the self-important bastard now, too._

_Poor Graham! I want to save him from this! He can't really love Damon in that way — it just doesn't make sense. And yet it does make sense. Damon's very sexy and powerful, he's attractive, he's got intense sexual charisma. I want to feel his cock inside me. It's a fantastic size and shape and I think I'd like it very much. I wish he hadn't come. I really, really wish he hadn't come._

_But — maybe — it doesn't matter? He's not stopping...  
_

***

Damon rubs his semen-coated cock head against Alex's lips. Alex curls his tongue under the rim, then turns his head away and wipes his mouth against his arm. He wipes his groin with a dirty T-shirt.

"Get your lube," Damon says in a gruff whisper.

Alex is trembling so hard when he fumbles it out of his box of intimate stuff that he drops the bottle twice. Damon is looking at him strangely. Alex looks at the lube bottle — it's the most popular brand among gay men in Britain. "I don't have to explain myself to you," Alex begs.

"Don't make me explain myself to you, then," Damon shoots back. He rummages in his jeans, grabs the strip of condoms out, and rips one open with his teeth. He squirts lube onto his right hand and reaches between Alex's buttocks. Alex immediately arches his back, spreading his legs, appallingly slutty. Damon's head reels again. With almost no effort whatsoever, his middle finger plunges into Alex, then two fingers. Alex shifts gently, mouth open, breathing heavily.

"Up a bit," he moans.

Damon pivots his wrist and aims for the prostate. As soon as he touches the concentrated mass of sensitive tissue, Alex groans with naked hunger. "Don't... poke it," he mumbles. "Just... tap it."

"I know what I'm doing," Damon mutters resentfully.

Alex is oblivious, grinding his penis into the bedclothes. Damon loses his patience after a few seconds, pulls the condom on with his left hand, and uses his right hand to guide the head of his cock, still only about half-hard, but rallying admirably, into Alex's anus. Alex immediately begins to buck around and convulse too much for Damon to go on, so Damon clamps his left hand around Alex's throat. "Lie still and let me do this," Damon demands. "Don't make me hurt you."

Damon's thrust, when it comes, is far too rough for it not to hurt. Alex cries out. Damon clenches his eyes shut, removing his hand from Alex's neck and placing it instead on Alex's thigh, pulling it up, bending the knee, twisting Alex's spine slightly. Alex cries out again, but not in pain this time — that corkscrew motion had brought Damon's throbbing penis firmly into contact with his prostate, and it's now threatening to explode. "Oh God yes! Oh God yes!" Alex babbles. "Oh — God — yes —" And Damon, knowing he's lost control, has to give into the rhythm of Alex's begging.

When Alex comes, it's a long slow unfolding of ecstasy — his spine relaxes, unfurls, he stretches out his leg and his toes, and his arms and his fingers, his breath comes out in a soft, satisfied moan. Only after this balletic performance does the spunk come, pulsing out copiously, draining him and soaking his sheets. He jerks himself off completely, a languid smile on his face. Damon remains still, holding Alex's leg in his hand, his own erection abruptly ebbing in the face of Alex's spectacular satisfaction.

Damon takes himself away. He pulls out and wraps the condom in its wrapper, then can't figure out where to put it. He sits blinking at nothing for a minute while Alex's ecstatic sighing slows to normal breathing. All at once, Alex holds his breath, and he and Damon look at each other without recognising each other.

Damon wants to apologise but he doesn't know what for.

Alex wants to explain, but he doesn't know which part, and he doesn't think Damon would understand, anyway.

Without saying anything else, Damon gets dressed, stands up, wipes his hands down his jeans, and leaves. Alex lies still for a long time afterwards, trying to drag out the bliss of having been fucked for as long as possible, but finding it difficult to enjoy the afterglow when so many objectives and identities are battling it out in his head.

_So now he knows. Now I have no power over him in this struggle over what I think is right for Graham. He's my friend too, dammit, and I hate seeing what being with Damon is doing to him._

_No power..._

_Except..._

_Except that I would never be so low as to use what we just did as emotional blackmail. I would never do that to Damon. I may hate him sometimes, but I don't hate him that much. And I don't hate Graham that much. And... why did Damon have to come round right now, when I'm really high and really horny and my resistance is at an all-time low? Why did he come here, anyway? That bastard... Lovely cock, though. I wish that things were different so I could feel it again._

_But I can't... that bastard... why would he do this to me? Why would I do this to him?_ With _him?  
_

_Graham must never, ever find out._

Alex pounds his fist onto the bed. He is resolved. He will never say a word about it to anyone... and he hopes that Damon will have the sense to keep his mouth shut as well... 


	10. (10)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The song at last comes together, and the group resolves to put the recent unpleasantness behind them and get back to the truly important things: writing songs, playing brilliantly, and propping up a table at the Good Mixer. Warning for internalized homophobia.

_I know that you want me to leave_  
_I'm amazed at how cold you can be_  
_Well may my weak and insipid soul grow stronger in your absence_

Damon sits on the studio floor, surrounded by the objects of his love, passion, and desire - Vox keyboards, tube amps, curly and straight cables, reel-to-reel recorders, the nasty old piano, a beat-up and scratched old acoustic guitar - and he wants to smash them all in their uselessness. Always before the instruments had been his friends, helping him sort out the logical problems in his head posed by music, but they're of no use to him now. He's made an awful mistake, and no matter how he tries to justify his actions in retrospect, he knows that he was wrong.

After leaving Alex yesterday (all sprawled and sloppy-fucked with his hair all screwed up and that look of regret and horror on his face) Damon couldn't go to Graham, or even go home on the off chance that Graham might be there waiting for him, and he had spent almost all his money, so he couldn't go to a pub and flatten out his misery under a tide of cider. Instead he spent the last of his pocket change on a tube ticket, riding aimlessly through London until he was caught by the transit guard, at the end of the line, on the last train, and forced off. He had spent the rest of the night wandering on foot.

By dawn he had found himself back at the studio, and since he has a key, he let himself in, curled up on the floor behind the piano, and fell into a restless sleep for a few hours. He’s awakened by sound engineers demanding tea and biscuits. Once he has them all sorted out, though, he's back with himself, in the one place he feels slightly safe, but he can't flee from the guilt he's carrying.

Hesitantly he picks up a melodica from the stack of instruments and plays a listless flourish on it. It comes out sounding so precisely how he feels - disjointed, hollow, melancholy - that he decides that's the instrument of the day. When he's playing music his mind shuts off - that's one of the things he likes about it. There are a lot of times when he just wants to shut off the noise coming from inside his head.

Mixed in with his pretty little tune (born out of the worst suffering he'd thought he'd ever experience, but he had been wrong), all of Graham's statements of love and lust swirl in his mind. He knows and loves Graham's passion, it being the closest match for his own, and to have it directed toward him—his body and soul—has been an extremely profound thing. It's stripped him to the bone, dissolving all his pretenses, even the one's he's built for himself.

_Thought I was in control,_ he agonises. _And I have not been in control, not for one second, since I've known he loves me in the way that he does. I don't control Graham and I don't control myself. I'm not even in control of myself when I'm not around Graham. I shouldn't have gotten into it with Alex - I should have known he'd do anything to avoid another fistfight. Thought I was cool and hard and a rock star when I'm just a tit._

_But whatever it is, it wasn't rape, even though that's what I had in my head - or if it was, it went both ways. Is it possible to have a two-way rape that both participants physically enjoy? Fuck! Anyway, Alex started it. Or did I start it?... Oh, God in heaven, I don't really know; it's all in a muddle. We were really stoned and I'd had whisky, and Alex, if he's awake and not in school, has always been recently drinking. He's a very talented functional alcoholic. We were knackered. Nobody was thinking; we just lashed out. If Alex was a girl, I'd want to fuck her, I mean, yeah, but he's not, so I don't want to. I didn't want to! I don't feel anything for Alex. I don't fancy him at all. He's all knees. It's Graham I love, even if it is despite myself. I'm in love with Graham. But it's more than that, even. It's deeper. I need to be an actual part of him._

_All right, I've justified_ how _it happened. I still don't have any answers about_ why. _And that's what Graham's going to want to know. But I can never tell him. He would never forgive me._

***

A great deal of noise from outside his head does disturb him at last, after solid hours of rocking himself and wheezing on the melodica, and he looks up to see Graham wrestling his guitar case in through the semi-blocked door, jangling the metal handles and cursing in the way that only Graham can. "Oh good, I knew you'd be here," Graham says brightly, grinning at Damon. "I've written a song!"

"Oh, Graham," says Damon brokenheartedly, and Graham immediately sets down his guitar and goes tumbling into Damon's arms on the floor. They hug so tightly that neither one can breathe, clinging to each other, each with his own individual desperation.

"What is it? What's the matter?" Graham asks as soon as the grip slackens enough for him to speak. He brushes Damon's overgrown mop of hair off his forehead.

Damon stares at the floor, sniffing and biting his lip. "I don't want to talk about it."

"What? You? You always want to talk about it. In detail." Graham smile fades. "Dez. What is it? What is it really?"

"No. Just - no. Just - Kiss me a hundred times."

Graham does understand this, and his smile returns. He presses his lips to Damon's forehead. "One," he announces. Damon smiles a little, too. Graham kisses Damon's eyebrow. "Two." He glances over Damon's bruised face, searching for the next likely spot, and his eyes are drawn to the purple-and-black crease, off centre, in Damon's lower lip. He zeroes in on it, kissing it, flicking his tongue against it, moving his tongue gently into Damon's mouth. Damon holds him tighter and tighter. Graham gently pulls away and gazes at Damon. "Three," he says. "I'll continue."

"Please do."

It takes Graham about half an hour to administer one hundred kisses, especially since he keeps losing track of what number he's on, and towards the end his kisses have gone under Damon's shirt and trousers and approach Damon's groin, though never settling on anything definite. When Graham's finished, Damon's a panting, half-melted puddle on the floor. "We don't have to stay here, you know," Damon murmurs.

"No, I've written a song, and you have to hear it." Graham returns to his guitar case, chuckling to himself. Damon groans sadly, but he's got a genuine smile, and he eagerly puts his clothes back together, gets to his feet, and sits at the piano to listen.

Graham plays his song, and Damon adds to it and modifies it, and then they toy around with Damon's newest song, the one that Graham still doesn't know what it's about, mainly because Damon has never sung the lyrics in full voice around him. Graham has been secretly working on the chording and fingering to make it as lovely as possible. Without even thinking, Damon sings along at the top of his voice, awkwardly playing the acoustic guitar along with Graham, and Graham sings along. When they reach the end of a phrase, Graham says, "That's a really bizarre lyric, Damon. I might sing it better if I could figure it out."

"No, just concentrate on the music. It's just stream of consciousness," Damon says.

"'Half my life has been explained'," Graham sings in his creaky voice. "What is the other half?"

"I don't know," Damon smiles weakly. "It hasn't been explained."

Graham punches his guitar. "Dammit, we need Alex here. I don't care if it's a day off, we need his sound. I'll go ring him."

"No!" Damon shouts too loudly.

Graham stares. "Why not?"

"Uh, er, he really doesn't want to come in today. He told me."

"Oh aye?"

"Yeah, I saw him yesterday."

"Oh aye?"

"Yeah, we - had a bit of a row. I really don't want to see him."

"Another one?" Graham muses, concerned. "Did you hurt him much?"

"No, no, it was nothing like that."

"Really, Damon, you shouldn't care about something like that. He ought to be here. We're in a group and we're working on a song - if he's free, and I know he is because there's no classes today, he ought to be in here. Maybe not Dave, because he might be at work - but I'm going to ring them both, just to make sure." Before Damon can protest any further, Graham's sprinted from the room.

Damon is unable to find anything in the studio with which to kill himself, and thus he's still alive when Graham returns a few minutes later, with tea and buns for them both. "So?" Damon mumbles, rubbing his head.

"Alex'll be round. Dave wasn't home."

"What? He said he'd come?"

"Yeah, he seemed right into it."

"Did you tell him I was here?"

Graham's brow knits in confusion. "No. I assumed he'd assume."

Damon sinks onto the piano bench. "OK," he says in a resigned voice.

"You two will not fight, all right? We'll work through this song and maybe then mine and then we can all go home. Simple and reasonable. It's just a work-through, it's not even a real practise..."

"Maybe you ought to be running things, Graham."

"Maybe I ought to," Graham agrees, deflecting the irony. "I don't see why you have to be the one that does everything. You've already sorted us out for a studio space, you get us gigs, you write most of the stuff - it oughtn't to be that way all of the time. For God's sake, let me do something for you once in a while."

Just as Graham and Damon are finishing their tea, Alex arrives, wrestling his case through the door. He's wearing what he knows is Graham's favourite shirt of his - some kind of bizarro Seventies outer-space pattern on polyester, short sleeves... It would look awful on nearly anyone except Alex, and it still makes him look faintly ridiculous. "Who put amps in front of the door?" he gripes, "that's just stupid." He looks into the room and sees the other two, and he lifts his chin a bit. "Damon; Gray,” he greets perfunctorily.

"Want to work on that song - what's it called, Damon?"

"I haven't thought of a title yet," Damon says slowly.

"You're wearing my favourite shirt," Graham grins at Alex, eyes shining. He jogs up and claps Alex on the shoulder, Graham's greeting-hug. It nearly knocks the unsuspecting Alex down, staring openmouthed, as he is, at Damon cowering on the piano bench. "What'd you do? You'd never wear that thing in this heat unless you were trying to soften me up for something."

"D-don't be so paranoid, Graham," Alex laughs with patently false breeziness, tossing his hair like Farrah Fawcett. Damon's panicked eyes dart back and forth through the room, in case he missed a murder-suicide weapon on the first look round. "Let's play. Shall we?"

For the first run-through, without the lyrics, Damon and Alex don't look at each other, and they fail to play in time with one another. Graham frowns down at his guitar. "Now let's go through it again, and maybe if Damon sings this time, you'll be able to listen properly," he says, with a tiny echo of Damon's usual sarcasm.

Damon stands in front of the microphone, looking seasick. He looks at Graham instead, and manages to play in time, trying to tune Alex out except as a bunch of bass tones following Graham's lead. But he can't help looking up to see Alex's dramatic key change as he sings, "You know more than I, so think for me - think why you're not me." And Alex looks up at the same time, and they gaze across the room at each other with the same expression of pain and fear.

Damon flubs his cue for the next line and Graham kicks his tremelo pedal in frustration. "Put it behind you, for Christ's sake!" he screams. "Look, Alex, I know you think we're fucking pathetic faggots and that you probably think we ought to be locked up, but - "

"I never said anything like that," Alex protests.

"But I see it. I see it all over your face. You're disgusted with us. Can't you just get over it?"

"It's nothing like that, Graham," Damon says softly, but accidentally, into the microphone, with faint delay. Damon hastily shuts the mike off, but the echoes of his words bounce around the room.

Alex is saying, "I _am_ over it, Graham. It's you that's not over it. It's _him_ that's not over it. I came in here today to play music, not psychoanalyse."

"Leave it out, Graham," says Damon.

Graham glances back and forth between the two of them, first with angry confusion, then, as he reads through Damon's pale, drawn face, alarm and anger. "What have you done?" he whispers. He looks back to Alex, and sees his suspicions confirmed; Alex blushes dark red through his tan. Damon rubs his fingers over his eyes and Alex wrings his hands. "You didn't," Graham says finally. "I can't believe it. Tell me I'm wrong. Please."

"You're wrong!" Alex yells frantically.

"You don't — understand," Damon tries to explain at the same time.

"What's to understand?" Graham spits. "You're trying to get rid of me. Emma was one thing, but this has really gone too far — even for you. What a horrible, horrible thing to do."

"You know that's not true," says Damon. "You're making assumptions. You don't even know anything about it."

"Damon, shut up before you make things worse," says Alex.

"No, don't shut up, Damon," Graham cuts in. His voice is now ice-cold. "I want to hear it. I want to know about your — row from last night. Did you talk about me? Did you call out my name in the heat of passion?"

"You're being a little shit," Damon says. "Why don't _you_ drop it? Why don't _you_ put it behind you?"

"Why don't you stop twisting my words around and using them against me? What did I do wrong? Have I done anything but love you?" Graham turns to Alex wild-eyed. "And you—! You. I thought you were my friend."

"I am," Alex says, picking his ears, wringing his hands, twisting his ankles awkwardly. "I am."

"That's not what a friend does." Graham kicks his pedal back into place and stomps on it a few times. "Neither of you - that's not what a friend does." He runs shaking hands through his hair, chops out a ringing chord on the guitar, slaps it down.

"You don't even know what happened," Damon says. "And nothing happened."

"Nothing happened," Graham repeats in a whisper, his eyelids twitching. "Nothing."

"We had a row," Damon insists, "and we're not very happy with each other at the moment."

"You lied to me," Graham says. "And you're still lying to me. How many times have you lied to me already and I believed you? How much I fallen for already?"

"Gray, nothing happened," Alex tries.

"And now _you're_ lying to me. I'd appreciate it if you'd stop.I'd appreciate it if you'd BOTH STOP FUCKING LYING TO ME!" In harmony with Graham's shout, the guitar produces a stinging wail of feedback. Graham begins to scream and fling himself around the room in a violent, destructive frenzy, kicking over amps and keyboard stands.

Damon runs up and grabs Graham by the shoulders of his T-shirt, holding him still. He gives Graham a good, hard shake, bends over very close, and speaks in a quiet, even tone. "Calm down, mate, you're smashing our gear." He pauses, and checks Graham for signs of calm. Graham is breathing heavily and his eyes are glistening, but he's not screaming anymore. "OK, I went over to Alex's last night to beat him up. We ended up shagging. I didn't know it was going to happen and I didn't want it to happen and I wish it hadn't happened. I think we both feel that way. You have to believe me - I really didn't know it was going to happen and I wish I could take it back, I wish I could undo it."

Graham's face is a mask of confusion and misery. "Alex is straight."

"Apparently not," Damon whispers.

"Don't touch me." Graham struggles to get away.

"Graham—“

"I said don't TOUCH ME! And I MEAN IT this time! Don't ever touch me again! Why would you do this to me? You want it over so badly that you'd do _that_?"

"I'm not even attracted to him, that's the thing!" Damon babbles, still clutching Graham's shirt.

Graham tears himself away, pulling a hole in the stretched seam of his T-shirt, and breaking a guitar string which whips around and hits Damon in the face, adding a fresh superficial cut to the ones already there. Graham pulls off his guitar and plops it back into its case, then goes up to the slouching, silent Alex. "Was it good for you, eh?" Graham hisses at him. "Was it nice having what I've had? Did you stick it in his bum, or did he stick it in yours? Eh? Which way do you swing, Alex the Swinger? Alex the Sex God? Was it good for you, too?"

"Graham, shut up," Alex says wearily.

"All that time you gave us grief for being queer when you're queer yourself, you bloody poof. You're the worst liar of all. I can't stand the sight of you."

"I never lied to anyone," Alex says. "And I'm not fucking queer, all right?"

"You fucked a bloke, didn't you? Or did he fuck you?"

Alex loses his cool. "I'm not fucking queer! Any more than you are! Graham, you're straight! I know you are! I've known you for how long—“

"And I've known you for how long. And I didn't know you'd even think about doing that. I don't even know who you are."

"You do know," Alex pleads. "You do know who I am. I'm your Alex. You've met my parents, you've been to my bedroom, you've looked at my pornography, you've held my head when I was sick and I've held yours. I'm the same person I've always been and I'm your mate. I've never meant to hurt you."

"You did," Graham says, but a lot of the fury has gone from his voice, leaving it wood-flute sad. "You did hurt me. And you must have known you would while you were doing it. Do you know how much I love him? Do you?"

"I do know," Alex says, looking away. "I do know and — and I'm sorry."

"Well, you've got what you wanted," Graham sighs. "Congratulate yourself." He looks across the room at Damon. "I'll be here on Thursday at two," he says flatly. "Show Alex my new tune, would you? I'd like to play it when Dave's here." He hoists his guitar case and makes for the door.

"Graham!" Damon cries. "Wait! Please!"

He catches Graham in the hall. The sound engineers are also in the hall, and Damon and Graham have to press themselves against the walls to let them pass. When they've gone, Damon catches Graham's torn shirt sleeve. "Graham, would you please listen to me."

"I listened," Graham says, his eyes very clear. "I don't think there's any more you can say, really."

"I love you, I do," Damon whispers.

"I know you do," Graham replies. "And I love you — but I can't. My two best mates who don't even fancy each other — no, I can't deal with that. I just can't. It's like you said and Dave said — I eat, sleep, and shit this band. When I sleep at night I dream about this band, I dream about our music. I'm sure that eventually I'll be able to look at you again without wanting to puke, but right now that's not the case. Please let go of me. Don’t—“ Graham edges away, his voice getting thick and mumbly, and his eyes shining with tears of frustration. "Please don't ever touch me again. Don't let me think about it again. I just — oh God. Why Alex?"

"Because I was just... I wanted..." Damon can't find the right words to describe how fluidly his thoughts of murderous violence had become sexual, how they remained violent thoughts, but turned into quite different actions. "I wanted to hurt him."

"You failed at that, mate," Graham laughs shakily. Two tears escape his eyes and get caught in his glasses, fogging the lenses. "You ought to aim better next time."

"This doesn't have to be the end, Graham," Damon whispers, holding his fingers fractions of an inch away from Graham's shoulder.

"Don't be naive, Damon," Graham says with withering pity. "It's like a blindfold has been taken off me. It's a dash of ice water in my face. I want something out of you that you're not capable of giving — to anyone. I pity the next person who falls in love with you — you're like a stampeding elephant, you tread on everything and destroy it and you're not even aware of it until it's too late. It's that more than anything that I can't deal with right now. It's part of you, like how you can write all this stuff and run this band — you're on a totally different playing field from the rest of humanity. You're not like other people. You scare me. But — I'll never leave you, I'll never leave you. I'm just as damaged as you are." Graham shakes his head and blinks, as if not believing what he's just said, and turns to go. Damon sinks to the floor and watches him leave.

When he's composed himself enough, Damon returns to the studio. Alex is seated on the piano bench, playing the bass line of the new song. He starts up when Damon returns, but Damon waves him back down again and pulls out a couple of cigarettes. He lights both and gives one to Alex.

"S he all right?" Alex asks.

"Yeah," Damon replies. "As all right as he's going to be."

Alex wrings his hands a little more, then suggests, "Drink?"

"Yes," says Damon, and gives him a little smile. "Loads of drink."

***

The four members of Seymour play in the studio together for the first time in three days. Dave looks well-rested and chipper; he's brought along his new girlfriend, and she sits quietly out of the way on the side, near Dave's kit, reading a computer repair manual.

Graham is dreadfully hung over and says little, but he tunes his guitar with quick, sure fingers, and plays with intensity and precision. He wears a new striped shirt given to him by his sister, in an attempt to cheer him up. That, and five or six baths, and a copy of _Pump Up The Volume_ on videotape, are keeping him functioning.

Damon is a haggard mess; he hasn't slept properly since he returned from Brighton, and his attempts to reset his bodily clock with sleeping pills and alcohol hasn't worked. He looks like a hollow, insubstantial ghost, angelic in a white T-shirt four sizes too big for him and his perennial threadbare blue jeans and Doc Martens. His voice is stripped to a throaty whisper.

Alex is aloof and mellow, secretly as hung over as Graham, but soothed by a shag from the crazy girl and great deal of hash before practise. He has really started to like the crazy girl and now reads her French poetry and brings her sweets he steals from Sainsburys. She found his prostate, and he found her G-spot, and now they both have something inexpensive to do in the evenings.

At the end of practise a slim, dark girl sneaks in, goes up to Alex, and whispers in his ear. Alex laughs. "I think it's time we stood at our table," Alex says, referring to their spot at the Mixer. This idea seems popular.

The girl speaks up. Her voice is very deep and posh. "May I join you?" she asks. She sneaks a glance at Damon, who is pointedly not looking at her.

"I don't imagine anyone'll mind. Dave, Gray, Dez, this is Justine; she lives across the path, up above the Mountain. I might be moving in there myself, if I can get the money to move in. Justine, give us a minute to put this away, and I'll join you there."

"I'm ready," Damon volunteers, "I'll show you where the table is."

"Cheers," she says. She smiles at him — a slow, wicked smile, tilted, like a cat's. "Let's go."

They walk alongside each other in the deep evening blue. "Alex tells me you're recovering from a bad break-off," Justine says with unnerving gentleness.

Damon glances at her. "Did he?" he mutters. Justine just nods and smiles, zen-like. "Yeah," he goes on, feeling at ease with her — she's not brainless, and she's not messing about with Alex (involved as he is with Crazy Suzan), so she's probably all right. In fact she makes Damon feel young and small and clumsy. "It was not good. I'm getting over it, though - to be glum about it would just be a waste of time. We've got a lot to do."

"That's the spirit," she replies. "Don't let it keep you down, eh? You've got a great band. I think you can go places."

"Of course we can go places," Damon puffs. "It's only a matter of time. Know music, do you?"

"I'm in a group myself."

"Oh aye?" Damon feels his spirits lift, genuinely lift, for the first time in forever. "Tell us about it."

By the time the other band members, and Dave's girlfriend-unit, have arrived, Damon and Justine are so heavily enmeshed in conversation that they don't notice. Graham looks pained at Alex, but Alex just shrugs. "She's a mate," he explains. "I haven't got any control over her."

"No, it's good," Graham says, with slight difficulty. "Really. I've got no claims on him. He's not mine." He grasps a pint and takes a swallow. "I hope she's ready for it."

"I think she'll be all right," says Alex. "She'll probably break his heart in the end, instead."

"Good," mutters Graham. "I hope she fucks him up.”

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs referenced:   
>  (1) "half your life has been explained" - "Luminous" (Blur B-side)  
>  (2) "Begging You" - Stone Roses  
>  (3) "She's So High" (Blur single)  
> -D and G, in the bath, are listening to "Cello Song" and "The Thoughts of Mary Jane" by Nick Drake  
>  (6) "I don't want to hurt you" - "Bone Bag" (Blur B-side)  
>  (7) "Soft as Snow (but Warm Inside)" - My Bloody Valentine  
> -"Space Oddity" - David Bowie  
>  (9) "always should be someone you really love" - "Girls and Boys" (Blur single)  
>  (10) "I'm amazed at how cold you can be" - "Fool" (Blur album track)
> 
> Thanks for reading! It comes from the heart!


End file.
